Stargate Ragnarok: Veiled Legacy
by Sealurk
Summary: Ep 1: Essentially a 'pilot' for an SG-1 spin-off, it's set in the Milky Way after Stargate: Continuum, so expect spoilers for most SG-1, and a little for SGA s5. A new team makes a big discovery that is related to the Asgard Legacy.
1. Chapter 1

**Stargate: Ragnarok**

**Veiled Legacy**

Sighing, he hefted the carbine to break his reverie. Aside from the occasional break in the otherwise endless grey cloud, affording him a brief glimpse of the spectacular ringed gas giant the world closely orbited, P7T-434 was an unremarkable, uninhabited and uninviting little rock. In the two days they had been here, his team had found no evidence of civilisation, past or present. The entire moon seemed to be nothing more than a cold, wet, miserable globe covered in windswept, treeless terrain vaguely resembling the moors back in his native England.

"Yup, _this_ is worth taxpayer's money." He muttered, pausing to wipe the accumulated rain off his face. A few dozen metres to his right, his team's medic, Corporal Moffatt, was casually wandering through the waist high vegetation with a digital video camera held in one hand. She was obviously as bored as the rest of them, but dedicated to her job, still valiantly looking for anything of interest. They had all been doing this for hours. Soil samples, plant cuttings and basic atmospheric and astronomical readings had been taken within a short time, with a cursory inspection revealing nothing notable about P7T-434, leaving the remaining day to scout out the area more thoroughly.

Not all SG teams got to investigate ruins, discover new technology, fight off threats or meet alien races, Taylor mused. At least he was out of Afghanistan, no longer hearing AK-47 rounds whistling past his head. The same could not be said about his old team though, and he felt a pang of guilt. He brushed it away quickly. He already had more than enough guilt in his life without adding to the pile.

"Ahem. 'Dear Major General Sir Richard Bullock. Thank you for selecting me to lead the second British reconnaissance unit attached to Stargate Command. Unfortunately, I will not be able to continue in this position, in light of the unrelenting, mind-numbing boredom and the fact that I'm out here freezing off parts of my anatomy I hold dear. If it's so damn important to the Ministry of Defence to get Brits into the Stargate Program, may I respectfully suggest you and your cronies shift your arses, take a running jump through the Stargate and try it for yourselves first? Yours oh-so-so-very-sincerely, Major Dave Taylor.' How do you reckon he'd take it, Corporal?" he asked, looking over at Moffatt.

"Something tells me you'd be better off trying to hack the gold out of a First Prime's forehead, sir – you'd at least have something to show for it afterwards…if you were to survive, of course, which is doubtful. Sir." Moffatt said. Taylor grinned, thinking it was good to see her come out of her shell a little more, a rare occurrence – she was still more than a little overwhelmed by her situation. The Combat Medical Technician had been on his team from the start, and had proven herself a valuable member, but Taylor still thought she was too green, and needed to loosen up a little.

Sighing, he clicked his radio.

"Llewellyn, Nesbitt, have you found anything? And I really do mean anything. Right now I'll take a peculiar looking stone."

"As a matter of fact, I have." came the Edinburgh accented reply.

"Oh? What?" Taylor responded, his interest mildly piqued, wondering why the good doctor hadn't reported it sooner. His radio crackled again in reply.

"I've found my personal limit for sheer, unremitting, brain-liquefying tedium, and the point at which I just might consider using my side arm on myself, because it would be a hell of a lot more interesting for the last millisecond of my life than wandering around this God-forsaken dump. And at least I'd feel a little bit of warmth for a while, too. Other than that, this dreary little orb has offered up nothing besides a geomagnetic field that's more powerful than Earth's."

"Is that interesting?"

"Not really. How about you, Dave – found anything?" the irate physicist said.

Taylor sighed.

"Nothing here except rain and plants. And over there…rain, and plants. Jarvis, Halverson, how about you?"

"Nothing here, Major. Putting a Stargate on this world has to be somebody's idea of a practical joke." Halverson said. Elise Halverson was his team's anthropologist, a petite, dark haired Norwegian-English woman.

"Those wacky Ancients…" he heard Sergeant Jarvis add dryly. Halverson chuckled.

"And ascension was just them playing ultimate hide and seek with the Asgard, yeah, I know." Taylor heard her respond.

"Right then, I think we can call this a day, unless there are any objections. Finish up anything you're doing and start making your way back to the gate – we'll pack up camp and dial Earth." Taylor said into his radio.

As the two other teams acknowledged his order with their own expressions of relief, with Nesbitt's the more colourful, Taylor nodded to Corporal Moffatt.

"Let's head back. I think it's beginning to get dark."

* * *

The Stargate was a welcome sight, and one that he found quietly exhilarating every time he saw it, despite being almost overgrown with vegetation. Other SG team members had quietly acknowledged the same thing to him – even the ones with years on the program. As he traipsed through the dense brown undergrowth, stumbling over rocks and trying to resist the wind's insistence on toppling him, he stared at the twenty-two foot high stone ring. It was the single most inviting sight on P7T-434, and even dormant, the orange-red of the chevrons lent a small sense of warmth to the otherwise drab, cold browns of the landscape and threatening grey of the sky.

Their camp, by comparison, was a pitiful and weather beaten affair – three olive green tents and a few dark green metal boxes.

He scanned the area, slinging the Canadian carbine over his shoulder. To his left, he could make out Second Lieutenant Gareth Llewellyn and Nesbitt picking their way through the dense bracken. As usual, Nesbitt seemed to be doing all the talking. The lanky commando engineer on the receiving end was, in Taylor's estimation, one of the most accomplished members of the Corps of Royal Engineers he'd met, in a variety of fields now including Goa'uld technology, and one of the most unlikely demolition experts. The man always seemed to have an endless supply of C4 explosives and detonators on his person.

On his right, the machine gun wielding bulk of Sergeant Colin Jarvis looked almost comical next to Halverson's petite frame as they made their way back to the Stargate. Jarvis was a six foot four inch mountain of ginger haired heavy weapons specialist, and after eleven uneventful missions, his trigger finger was getting itchy. Taylor found him to be somewhat unimaginative and unfazed by the sights and wonders they had witnessed, but fanatically loyal and dependable.

"I'll be glad to get back after this." he said to Moffatt, shivering for effect.

"Really? I'd have thought you'd have dealt with far worse conditions than this, sir." Corporal Moffatt said, perplexed.

"Oh hell yes. SAS selection in the Brecon Beacons, for a start. Exercises in Norway. And K2 wasn't exactly a picnic. Compared to those, this is a doddle." he leaned in closer in a mock conspiratorial manner. "Doesn't mean I have to like it though."

She smiled. The image of a tough-as-nails, K2-climbing SAS officer deemed worthy of the Stargate Program moaning about the weather had a comical aspect, given the near superhuman status the media attributed to them. In her short time working alongside Major Taylor, Kelly Moffatt had found the media weren't far wrong, but the SAS were still very much human, if Major Taylor was any indication.

The other teams were close now, but with the wind picking up, Taylor chose to communicate with his radio – they'd be more likely to hear it than him bawling over the gale.

"Hurry up you lot. I'd like to get back before trenchfoot sets in."

He saw Nesbitt throw his hands in the air and gesticulate wildly – and rudely – and smiled. The next second, the man was gone.

"What the hell..."

Taylor was sprinting before he even realised it, leaping over the small boulders and hidden ridges that dotted his path. He ran straight past the Stargate, all thoughts of the warmth and comfort on the other side forgotten. Lt. Llewellyn was staring at the ground where Nesbitt had been, casting his own carbine from side to side.

As he got close, he saw what had happened.

There was a hole, less than a metre in diameter and so surrounded with vegetation it would have been hard to see until almost on top of it. The inside was jet black rock – only Llewellyn's tactical light showed the sides.

Taylor handed his carbine to Moffatt as she slowed to a halt beside him, noting Jarvis and Halverson jogging to his position.

The hole wasn't wide, but it was deep, and black. Black dirt lined the edge – no wonder neither Llewellyn nor Nesbitt hadn't seen it, the hole seemed to have been covered with a crust before Nesbitt crashed through.

"Nesbitt!" Taylor yelled. He waited for a response – there was none. What if he was unconscious, or injured – or worse?

"NESBITT!" he shouted again. Seconds passed.

"You know, while I am out of the wind and rain, I would appreciate it if you could GET ME THE HELL OUT OF HERE!" came the softened Scottish voice. Taylor tried to judge how deep down the man was by the volume of his voice. It was hard to tell, but he guessed he was about ten metres under the surface.

"I'm sorry sir, I just didn't see it." Llewellyn said apologetically.

"Judging by this," Taylor casually indicated the freshly broken edge of the hole, "it wasn't your fault."

Moffatt leaned carefully over the edge of the Nesbitt-sized gap, brushing an escaped wisp of blonde hair behind her ear. Small chunks of black dirt fell into the hole, but the ground held under her.

"Anything hurt, Doctor?" she called.

"My pride, my arse, nothing important. Seems I slid most of the way down." came the echoing reply.

"Right, we'll have you out in a minute - don't go anywhere." Taylor said, knowing how much those words would rankle Nesbitt. Moffatt grinned, and Taylor even noticed Llewellyn smile, albeit weakly.

"Shame, I just saw a pub down here. Get a bloody move on!"

Taylor stood up, taking care to move away from the hole – there was no telling if the ground near to it would also give way.

"Right, Sergeant Jarvis, get back to camp, grab the – " Taylor began.

"HEY!"

Swearing under his breath, Taylor knelt next to the hole.

"I said we'd have you out in a minute Doctor. Be patient."

"No, actually, change of plan. I think you should come to me – there's something down here."

* * *

"When you said there was something down here," Taylor said, tugging the rope to let Jarvis know he was down safely, "I thought you meant something alive."

'Here' was a small dark cave formed out of the black rock, connected to the surface by a small, slanted, naturally formed fissure, just big enough for a man to pass through without hitting his head on the sides. Playing the light of his carbine's tactical lamp over the walls and ceiling, he saw now that the crust had formed from loose rocks jammed into the fissure, and eventually worn down and grown over – Nesbitt had just hit a weak spot.

The tactical light on the Colt Canada C8 gave impressive illumination, but Taylor still fished out his torch and switched it on. Between his and Nesbitt's various light sources, the cave was actually well lit.

"Oh please. We've been here two days and the largest animal we've seen was a furry, herbivorous snake the size of a large earthworm. You think I'd need an SAS officer with an assault rifle to protect me from those?" Nesbitt was in his forties, his receding ruddy brown hair and beard flecked with silver.

"Point taken." Taylor said, casting his tactical light around the cave.

"You're just annoyed you didn't get to shoot something." Nesbitt muttered, grinning.

"The way you're going, I may yet. So, what are we looking at?" Taylor asked.

Nesbitt chuckled and wandered over to the rock face in front of him, and slowly began wiping his hand across it. Loose black rock in the form of pebbles and dust cascaded onto the floor.

"Now, I'm not a geologist, but this rock definitely looks volcanic. A lava flow, old and cold. But look at this." He said, pointing.

Taylor aimed his gun's light at the point Nesbitt was identifying. In the uniform black rock, there was a strong, ordered trace of silver. It wasn't a seam of mineral – it was something solid buried in the lava.

"Take this." Taylor said, handing his gun and torch to Nesbitt and drawing a knife from a sheath in his tactical vest. The rock was dense and hard, but Taylor's knife – a blackened survival blade – was harder, and unquestionably less brittle. After a few seconds of stabbing and chipping at the solid lava, more of the silver object appeared.

Nesbitt stood watch, aiming both torches and the tactical light on the sliver of metal, his fascination mounting.

"This…might…take a while." Taylor grunted. His radio crackled.

"Sir, you're going to have to hurry it up down there." Lieutenant Llewellyn said. "I just got a data burst from the M.A.L.P.. The temperature has dropped four degrees in the last few minutes, and is still falling. Wind speed is climbing. The M.A.L.P.'s atmosphere sensors say we've got a winter storm coming in, and a bad one at that. We do not want to be here when it hits."

Taylor looked at Nesbitt. The physicist looked concerned, like he'd just remembered something troubling.

"We could get everyone down here and wait it out…" Taylor suggested.

"I wouldn't – my guess is the moon's swinging around behind the gas giant, passing into its shadow. If it is, it'll be cut off from all the solar radiation that keeps it 'warm', which will cool a planet this size very quickly as the shadowed side tries to suck heat from the lit side, triggering strong winds, ice storms and a huge, fast drop in temperature. And it'll last until it passes out of the shadow, which is probably in about a day, maybe two. We would find this place filling up with freezing cold water, or we'd just die of straight hypothermia. Either way, I doubt we'd make it back to the Stargate."

"Well…at least that's…interesting. Okay – plan B." Taylor grunted, yanking the silver object out of the wall.

* * *

"You know what, it was actually nicer down there..." Nesbitt yelled as Jarvis hauled him out of the ground. The big Sergeant was physically huge and unnaturally strong, somewhat evidenced by the presence of a Minimi Light Machine Gun, a large backpack and even an AT4 launcher strapped to his person – he'd quickly and willingly become the team's unofficial 'mule' – but the wind was so powerful now he was visibly having to resist it. The rain that had been falling since they had arrived had become freezing cold, and the thick grey cloak of cloud had rapidly become black and threatening, and not just because it was getting darker. Where before they had merely had to deal with constant drizzle, they now had to battle a veritable downpour and gale force winds.

"Say the word, and you can go back." Jarvis offered, pinning his cap down with one hand, ignoring the numbness in his fingers from the cold.

"Uh…I'll endure it, thank you Colin."

"Enough! Get back to the gate, quickly." Taylor was already heading towards their small camp, but his progress was slow fighting the wind. He was suddenly grateful that prior to joining Nesbitt in the cave, he'd ordered Moffatt, Halverson and Llewellyn to begin packing the camp away. He saw now how fortuitous that had been – had he left it any longer, they would most likely have had to abandon all their gear, which would not be received well by his superiors.

The air was freezing, and snow had begun to fall – sideways, and at speed. Llewellyn hadn't exaggerated the storm's power or danger at all, and neither had Nesbitt exaggerated how quickly the weather would turn – Taylor suspected that if they didn't dial out soon, they would be hit by the full force of a potentially lethal winter storm. Given how fast the storm had appeared, how quickly the weather had changed from wet and miserable to subzero and dangerous, Taylor guessed they had mere minutes before they were at risk of hypothermia. After that, death.

The situation had degenerated more rapidly than Taylor believed possible. The temperature was now well below zero, visibility down to mere metres as the blizzard drove snow at them with violent gale force winds.

Halverson, Llewellyn and Moffatt had all but abandoned struggling with the camp with the high winds making their job virtually impossible, but they'd apparently been able to collapse two of the tents and collect the more expensive gear.

"Tell them to leave the tents! Grab the rest and be ready to move!" he shouted, mere inches from Jarvis' face. The sergeant nodded and moved off.

He spun, shielding his eyes from the biting cold of the snow, trying to see the DHD. It was barely visible.

He hit the ground, finding it to be rock solid and freezing already, and crawled across towards the DHD. He planted his feet wide and clung on to the pseudo-metallic pedestal to resist the gale. Taylor extended one shaking hand – he realised there was no sensation but the sting of intense cold anymore, but he knew that the only thing that mattered was dialling Earth. It was so hard to concentrate – he'd never known a storm like it, never encountered such a rapid and drastic change in weather. Five lives besides his own were relying on him now, and their timescale for survival was about to drop to seconds.

"Auriga." he muttered, depressing the embossed metallic button, hearing the gratifying sound of a chevron locking, and seeing the glyph illuminate.

"Cetus. Centaurus."

The rest of his team were all but invisible now. The only way he could see the gate were the three lit chevrons, their orange glow faintly visible through the snowstorm.

"Uh…damn it, where is it…Cancer!"

The button didn't light. He tried it again, and on the third attempt, punched it hard, counting on the fact that he couldn't feel the pain right now, and he would at least have access to painkillers soon. It lit.

"Sc-Scutum."

He was sure he was leaving layers of skin behind on some of the glyphs, but he didn't care. That was what the infirmary was for.

"E-E-Eridanus."

His eyes were streaming so badly as the wind and snow tore at all his exposed flesh, he couldn't make out the individual glyphs. He'd have to locate them by memory, not sight, and hope he could control the shivering and resist the wind long enough to dial the right ones.

"P-p-point of o-origin. Dial, damn it!" he screamed to himself, heaving down on the red activation dome in the centre of the pedestal.

The sight was glorious to behold. Where before there had only been a blanket of white, and the roar of the wind, there was now a bright blue-white explosion accompanied by the double roar of the vortex bursting outwards from the Stargate, replaced swiftly by a shimmering puddle of glowing blue light. Quickly, he peeled back his sleeve, revealing the GDO. He didn't much relish the idea of exposing more of his flesh to the bitterly cold air, but necessity outweighed comfort. His fingers were red and numb, and he was shivering badly as he typed in the number sequence – although he couldn't see the device, it was a requirement of SGC training to know how to enter identification code by feel.

His IDC entered, he began moving towards the gate. He thought he heard five sucking noises through the howling wind, but he didn't know if he'd imagined it and his team could be right next to him and he'd never know it. The event horizon was inches away now, close enough to hear its inviting burbling over the storm. With immense effort, he pushed himself into the wormhole…

…and onto a clanking metal ramp. The room was bright, and warm, and comparatively quiet. He hugged his chest, willing his body to warm up – behind him, he heard and felt the puddle evaporate. There were urgent voices all around him.

"Medical team to the gateroom."

"SG-27, are you alright?" He definitely recognised that deep, gravelly voice, even if his eyes were streaming so much he was virtually blind.

"Uh, yes sir, General. Just a little freezer burnt."

* * *

General Landry exited his office and moved towards the head of the conference table. The six people he wanted to see were already sat in their seats.

"Dr Lam cleared us for debriefing, sir. The carpet might get a little damp while we defrost, but otherwise she says we were lucky to dial home before hypothermia or frostbite became serious." Taylor said, nursing a mug of steaming coffee. He wasn't the only one cradling a hot drink. The SGC's main briefing room felt surprisingly warm, something he was grateful for, and he knew the rest of his team felt the same way.

"That's good to hear, Major." General Landry replied. "I'm happy your team is back in one piece, mainly because it means I don't have to get on the phone to Whitehall and explain to General Bullock why one of the two brand new SG teams he's been so…_enthusiastic_ about getting didn't return from a basic recon. That's a hell I could do without visiting."

Taylor smiled weakly, but politely. He agreed with Landry in this – he knew full well how caustic and explosive the Major General could be, especially to an American, and he'd heard it said that there was no such thing as the pleasure of his company. He also knew how hard the Ministry of Defence had pushed the U.S. Department of Defense to get Britons into the Stargate Program, not counting a handful of scientists and soldiers in the Atlantis Expedition. General Bullock had been the man responsible for the significant British contribution to the Atlantis Expedition, most of which was in the form of funding, so the I.O.A. were inclined to support him in his bid. With both the MoD and I.O.A. leaning on them for several years, the DoD had no option but to submit.

"So could you tell me just what happened to almost turn you into Brit-cicles?" the General continued, beaming at his own terrible joke.

"The M.A.L.P. didn't detect the gas giant, General – we only discovered it when Dr Nesbitt set up his gravitational sensors, because direct observation was next to impossible through the cloud. Nobody's fault, just pure bad luck." Taylor responded, before fixing Nesbitt with a stare – his cue to take over. Nesbitt cleared his throat and leaned forward.

"Uh, yes. Originally I just thought the planet had an unusually long day-night cycle. Anyway, I speculated that a combination of the moon's distance from the gas giant – which is massive, bigger than Jupiter – and a sudden drop in insolation…uh, solar heating, was enough to trigger a powerful winter storm. Turns out I was right."

Landry nodded thoughtfully before leaning back in his chair.

"Hmm. This isn't the first time something like this has happened – binary stars, gas giants…even black holes have been a pain in our butts before because we didn't know they were there. Dr Lee assures me this will be rectified in the Mk. IV M.A.L.P.s, but for now, it's just a chance we have to take. Now, what about this tablet you brought back?"

It was Halverson's turn to speak.

"Well, it's damaged. Badly. Not surprising really, since it was found buried in what we suspect was a huge and ancient lava outpouring."

"I'm sorry, Dr Halverson, did you say lava?"

"Yes. Dr Nesbitt and I have a theory. We found so much volcanic rock we think that a long time ago in P7T-434's past, there was a supervolcanic eruption, maybe even a VEI-9…basically, the biggest outpouring of lava, smoke and ash that you can imagine. Bigger than if Yellowstone were to go up. If there was a structure near the gate, maybe a research outpost, it would almost certainly have been badly damaged or destroyed by a river of lava – the gate may have been high enough to escape being buried. As if that wouldn't have been bad enough, we suspect that the amount of ash and smoke in the atmosphere triggered a severe volcanic winter, enough to force a short but sharp ice age that we think 434 is just exiting. As for the tablet, well, most of the text has been melted or abraded off, but we do know something about it." She said, looking at each person around the table. She had their attention.

"Which is?" Landry prompted.

"It's Asgard."

She let that sink in, and from the expressions she saw, she hadn't overestimated the enormity of the statement. Unlike the Goa'uld, regarded as an ancient and powerful civilisation of litterbugs, the Asgard left almost no trace of their presence anywhere. And since they had elected to commit racial suicide to pre-empt the terrible and degrading fate that lay ahead of them by obliterating their own planet, there were precious few Asgard artefacts to be found, much less something as primitive as an engraved tablet.

"What little text we can make out employs a sophisticated version of the standard runic alphabet, just like they used, but it's basically incoherent. I think I can make out a few words – like, uh…'protect', 'hidden', and one that means 'of supreme importance', but I don't know the context. However…there are other very recognisable markings." She said, handing the warped, battered metal tablet to Landry. He studied it for several seconds.

"Those are – "

"Yes General, those are gate addresses. I count nine in total, but because of the damage, only a few are complete. One definitely corresponds to P7T-434, but the most interesting one is at the very bottom. It's completely separate, and has even been engraved more prominently, which is probably why it's more legible."

Taylor leaned forward.

"Excuse me if I'm being dense, but I thought the Asgard barely used the Stargate network. I mean, their ships were so fast they barely needed the gates except in an emergency. So…what are a load of gate addresses doing on an Asgard research paper?"


	2. Chapter 2

Nesbitt glanced wearily at the doorway. It was too late at night to be getting visitors, even in the SGC.

"So, who did you threaten to get your own lab, or did you just steal somebody else's?" Taylor asked.

"I've been bounced around from one lab to another – Dr Lee's first, but then he came back from his holiday early, then Felger's, then Carter's, and now this one . It's Dr McKay's – while he's in Atlantis, they said I could make use of it and that they wouldn't let him know. Which was nice." Nesbitt replied, turning back to the three computer displays on the desk, before tapping something into the keyboard. Next to him, the tablet sat under a complicated looking device, but at its core, Taylor recognised what was essentially just a collection of cameras staring straight down at the artefact.

"You met him once, didn't you?" Taylor said, seating himself opposite Nesbitt.

Nesbitt leaned back in his chair and stretched, grateful for the break the conversation afforded him.

"Met him? I worked with him at Area 51. Absolutely brilliant mind, total genius."

Taylor was taken aback.

"Wow. You know what Al, you're probably the first person I've heard say anything nice about that man."

"No, I said he was brilliant and a genius. In fact he's probably the most brilliant moron in existence, with all the charm of a used handkerchief. Rodney McKay has a life-threatening need to get laid – specifically, I'll be the one threatening his life if he doesn't."

"Well, he's with that doctor now isn't he? Hasn't changed much from what I heard."

"No, probably not, which is a shame because he's a fantastic physicist, but a terrible human being – and a big factor in me being glad I missed the Daedalus."

Taylor realised he had to move quickly – the Daedalus had been mentioned, and that meant the hour long story of how Nesbitt had almost been assigned to the Atlantis Expedition was seconds away. The only thing that could make it worse was if Jarvis were present – he had actually been to Atlantis as part of the small British contribution to the expedition, a Royal Marine Commando on Sheppard's city security detail. He'd stuck it for three months before requesting a transfer back to Earth. Two Atlantis bores in the same room…Taylor decided he'd prefer to pick a fight with a Jaffa. If they began a discussion about Woolsey's leadership potential, he decided he would be willing to find Teal'c and say unspeakable things about his parentage and combat ability. If Teal'c was in a good mood, it might only be a two month stay in the infirmary.

"They dialled P7T-434 again about an hour ago…the M.A.L.P. appears to be frozen solid, but the weather's clearing up." He said.

"Sounds about right – 434 should be perfectly safe to go back to in a couple of days." Nesbitt answered.

"Hey, did you hear that Elise spent the rest of the day pleading for access to the Asgard core on the Odyssey to research this thing?" Taylor said, indicating the Asgard artefact. "So far, no joy – she's actually emailed General Bullock asking him to make a formal request to the Pentagon."

"That wizened old git? He'll do it, no matter how futile – anything to get at the Yanks." Nesbitt answered. Taylor knew Nesbitt had endured his own share of encounters with the General during his selection and vetting.

"Anyway…what are you working on?" Taylor asked, gloating inwardly at how successfully he'd changed the subject. Another bullet dodged, he mused.

"What? Oh…just analysing the tablet. Running a few scans that might reveal a little more of the text, or shed light on the missing glyphs in the gate addresses. Because it's partly made out of trinium – got to love a race that uses one of the strongest metals in existence to write notes on – I'm hoping that a terahertz-sensitive camera might pick up residual patterns left by the engraving process, but it may need a catalyst, basically a high tech dye. You don't happen to know of a chemical that stains an oxidised heavy trinium isotope under illumination by EM radiation at four hundred and twenty seven gigahertz, do you?"

Taylor simply stared blankly.

"I think that was on last night's Weakest Link."

"Heh. What are you doing up so late anyway, Dave?" Nesbitt responded, staring once again at the displays.

Taylor yawned.

"I couldn't sleep, so I thought I'd come and talk to you." He groaned, stretching again. Nesbitt chuckled.

"Oh, nice! Look, while you're here, take a look at this and tell me what you think. I might just be seeing patterns because I want to; you know, physicist and all." Nesbitt said, changing the middle display with a few keystrokes.

Taylor got off the chair and sidled around the table.

"Okay, look: of the nine addresses on the tablet, three are complete, and one is missing only one symbol. This is what happened when I entered the complete addresses into the base computer." Nesbitt explained.

On the screen, a partial map of the Milky Way galaxy appeared, with every star a green point against a black background – each green point was a star system with a Stargate address in the Ancient's database according to both the data Colonel O'Neill had programmed in when under the influence of an Ancient repository, and data retrieved from Atlantis. After a moment, three stars lit up, relatively close to each other.

"Riiight. What am I supposed to be seeing?" Taylor ventured.

"Eh? Oh, bugger. I forgot. These are the three complete addresses, including P7T-434. I checked the Ancient database, and came up with four addresses that matched the nearly complete one. One of them," he said triumphantly, "goes here."

A fourth star lit up, close to the others.

"Hmm. So they're close together. Look, I'm sorry, it's late – what are you driving at, Al?" Taylor said.

"Look…ah, wait. Look – these are the three definite addresses, and the best guess at the nearly complete one, in the Ancient database. Now watch what happens," Nesbitt said, his finger hovering over a function key, "when I toggle the Goa'uld cartouche addresses as an overlay."

As he pressed the key, the screen lit up. Around two thirds of the stars changed from green to orange, and for a moment, Taylor thought the physicist's brain was indeed seeing patterns where there were none – but then he noticed something.

"Is that…what is that?"

The four highlighted stars sat within a small spherical region that held almost two dozen star systems – none of which appeared on the Goa'uld cartouche. Three of them sat at the very edge of this gap in the Goa'uld knowledge of the Stargate network, almost at corners of an invisible cube. But the fourth sat well inside this void.

"I'll give you one guess which address that star corresponds to, and if you get it wrong, you're buying me a steak." Nesbitt said, grinning.

"I'm gonna say…the one with all the extra-special engraving that was separate from the others?"

"Damn, no steak for me!" Nesbitt beamed.

Taylor felt a pang of excitement – he had an indescribable feeling that Nesbitt might have found something big.

"Have you made any partial matches to the other addresses yet?" He asked, suddenly feeling a great deal more awake. He suspected he wasn't going to get much sleep tonight.

"Uh, no, but - " Nesbitt began.

"If you can't identify five partial match addresses that correspond to the other five corners, you're buying steaks for everyone at O'Malleys." Taylor said, walking hurriedly out of the room.

"Uh…when you say 'everyone'…Dave?"

* * *

The control room felt crowded to Taylor. Along with the usual personnel, it was now occupied by General Landry and all six members of SG-27. For an operation as epic in scope as the Stargate Program, it felt far too small for what it did. When he'd first had the Stargate Program explained to him, and the SGC described, he'd imagined a huge subterranean control room to rival anything NASA owned. He'd actually been disappointed to see the real thing.

"I hope you're right about this Doctor. We made four attempts to dial that address." Landry muttered, staring at one of the monitors.

"Me too, General. But I just think it's too unlikely to be coincidence. There has to be something important about the ninth address." Nesbitt said.

"Getting telemetry now, sir. Putting the video link through." Sergeant Harriman said, seated at the console.

"I happen to agree with you, Dr Nesbitt. That's why I asked the Jaffa Council to send a scout ship – if there's anything there, they'll tell us."

Taylor had hoped they would send one of the BC-304s, partly because of the cooler relations they had endured with the Free Jaffa Nation of late, but Landry had stated that none could be spared, not least because it was still considered a relatively low priority mission. Taylor wondered if this was also a commentary on the supposed special relationship between the USA and the UK. He dismissed these thoughts quickly, and stared at the monitor. The blinking green and black screen of the SGC's custom operating system suddenly changed to a live video feed from the interior of a Goa'uld scout ship. A Jaffa, his forehead bearing the mark of Lord Yu, sat at the controls of the small interstellar vessel.

"I have just passed the planet you have designated P7T-434, General." The Jaffa spoke in the strangely officious, emotionless tone all Jaffa seemed to have adopted. "It will not take very long to reach this world you are interested in, perhaps – "

The transmission abruptly ceased, replaced by a screen of static.

"Walter? What happened?" Landry asked, concerned.

The gate technician scanned several diagnostic displays before answering, shaking his head.

"I can't re-establish a link, sir. It's not at our end, nor is it the subspace relay. Whatever went wrong, it happened on the scout ship."

Taylor's mind was racing – had the Jaffa ship been attacked? Was it just a simple communications error? Maybe even a galactic Bermuda Triangle? Either way, the mystery of the Asgard tablet had deepened, and Taylor judged that would elevate its standing in the mission priority listings.

"Sergeant, where's the Apollo right now?" Landry said.

Bingo, Taylor thought, and suppressed a grin, before remembering an allied soldier might just have lost his life over this mystery. The urge to grin died away swiftly, the urge to find out what was going on growing stronger with every second. He glanced at the rest of his team. Most of them were somewhat slack jawed, wearing expressions of confusion and concern. Jarvis simply frowned, almost like he didn't understand what was going on.

"The Apollo is returning from a Pegasus supply run, two days away from Earth, sir." Walter replied, almost instantly. The man's efficiency was legendary.

"Send Colonel Ellis a message – he has new orders. He's to divert to P7T-434 and scan the area for the scout ship, but to do so with extreme caution. Attach everything we have on the tablet, the scout ship and the planet." Landry said, before turning and heading back up to his office.

Taylor chewed his lip for a second, deep in thought.

"General? Request permission to take my team back to P7T-434. Nesbitt thinks the bad weather should have cleared by now, or at least be on its way out. We may be able to shed a little more light on this whole situation, maybe even advise the Apollo – depending on what we find, if anything."

Landry stood on the step, considering the possibility.

"Assuming the M.A.L.P. says its safe – if the M.A.L.P. is still working – I'll consider it."

* * *

"Chevron 3 encoded."

There were still technicians tending to the Field Remote Expeditionary Device sat on the ramp, making last minute checks of its battery levels, motor diagnostics and even simply ensuring its cargo was secure. Taylor knew this was SG-27's first extended survey mission, and he had no intention of making any elementary mistakes – he didn't want to have to dial the SGC one day into their three day stay to request extra food, although with Jarvis and Nesbitt on the team, he realised he might have to anyway.

"Have we got enough firepower, do you think Major? Thinking those wee veggie-snakes might stage a rebellion and slowly nibble us to death?" Nesbitt said, indicating the four ammunition cases in the F.R.E.D. buried under tents and boxes of scientific apparatus. Taylor had made sure each team member carried double the normal ammunition load, and even Jarvis had raised an eyebrow at being asked to take an extra AT-4 launcher and a Stinger surface-to-air shoulder launched missile.

"Gut instinct – I've learnt to listen to it, it's normally spot on. I know it's a cliché, but something doesn't feel quite right, or maybe we've pushed our luck with so many uneventful recons. I just don't want to get caught out."

"Cheery thought…well, I hope you're wrong. For all our sakes." Nesbitt said.

"Chevron 4 encoded."

"Besides, there's a saying I pretty much live my life by: better to have and not need, than need and not have. And this is the Stargate Program – impossible is mundane, improbable is certain. I'd have thought you'd have noticed that by now Alastair." Taylor responded, checking the magazine on his assault rifle, before ensuring the newly attached underslung grenade launcher was loaded. Nesbitt nodded assent.

Taylor liked listening to the SGC's Stargate dial – it gave the ancient device its own distinctive, friendly character amongst every other gate in the network, and heightened the pre-mission buzz he always got. He'd also quickly found it helped to focus his mind on the mission. The soft rasp of the inner track revolving filled his ears, followed by its abrupt cessation and a solid, heavy triple thunk as the chevron locked.

"Chevron 5 encoded."

He scanned the rest of his team, most of whom were being assisted by USAF techs and airmen – Moffatt was reluctantly checking her pistol, Halverson was being helped with a large backpack, Llewellyn was discussing the F.R.E.D.'s remote with a technician and Jarvis was waiting impatiently for the gate to open, cradling his LMG. The SGC had treated both SG-26 and SG-27 with kid gloves since General Bullock had successfully badgered the DoD into giving him what he wanted. Taylor was aware it had taken four years of political and legal wrangling and furious argument between Whitehall and the Pentagon to snag and secure consent for two UK sponsored SG teams to operate out of Cheyenne Mountain, and that as a result, the SGC were loathe to let anything untoward occur. Major-General Sir Richard Bullock's fury and capacity for creative vengeance were enough to give even the US military a headache – Taylor had been told the General never ceased to remind them of what he considered their inexcusable conduct over Glastonbury, regardless of the then Prime Minister's attitude.

"Chevron 6 encoded." Sergeant Harriman announced.

That was typically the signal. Satisfied and unable to do anything more to assist their trans-Atlantic cousins, the American technicians and airmen exited the embarkation room. Taylor watched them go before checking his watch – almost twenty to eleven in the morning.

The inner track stopped abruptly, and the final chevron snapped downwards over the instantly recognisable point of origin, and lit.

"Chevron 7, locked."

Accompanied by the characteristic whining double screech, actinic blue-white light filled the room as the gate flooded with exotic particles and exploded outwards, quickly receding and settling into the familiar but always exhilarating upright puddle.

"That bit never gets old." Taylor grinned.

Now they merely had to wait – if the M.A.L.P. didn't suggest it was safe to go, the mission would be scrubbed.

"Receiving M.A.L.P. telemetry. Everything looks good…well, as good as P7T-434 ever gets. Uh…it's safe." Walter replied.

Taylor turned just in time to see Landry take up his habitual position alongside Sergeant Harriman in the control room.

"You may proceed, SG-27. Good luck."

Taylor nodded and stepped into the wormhole.

* * *

Taylor's first trip through a Stargate wormhole was when his team, alongside SG-26, were undergoing orientation as the final part of their training. Understandably, he thought, they were being babysat by an experienced SG team as they gated to the Alpha Site and back to get used to and understand the process, to put theory into practice. Not long afterwards, still slightly overwhelmed by the experience, Taylor had been asked by Captain Maddock, the British liaison officer assigned to the SGC, to describe the sensations of gate travel for posterity.

"Well…you're standing in front of that event horizon, which looks and sounds like a burbling, rippling, backlit pool, but which you know is a barely controlled tear in reality that exposes spatial dimensions we aren't built to comprehend. On the other side, just inches away, is a realm of physics I can't begin to understand – something to do with engineered space-time and sub-quantum matter-energy conversion…scary stuff. But you reach out and touch it all the same, because it actually doesn't feel threatening. It feels inviting.

"Surprisingly, it doesn't feel like water, or liquid – because it isn't wet, it's a combination of weird, exotic particles and bizarre types of energy, and the fabric of space behaving strangely – but it ripples, visibly and audibly, and there is resistance, and it feels…greasy, if that makes sense. It slides off your flesh easily, but leaves no residue because this isn't a chemical, a liquid, this is raw quantum physics right at your fingertips, and you can feel it trying to pull you in. Just gently, mind.

"So you push a little deeper. It feels a bit cold, but not freezing, and there's a tiny tingling sensation – nothing uncomfortable. So you push off the ramp and let the gate pull you in fully – that's why it looks like someone stepping into a gate is stepping onto something solid, the gate holds you in place on the other side. You're weightless but experiencing increased pressure, you're being held. And you don't actually go anywhere until you're fully inside the gate.

"I think…I think your brain tells you it's going to feel like being underwater when you see and hear that puddle. And for a brief moment, it sort of does – but not entirely. You feel pressure, more than just air, but it's a change in the fabric of space, not a liquid surrounding you. And then you feel your entire body being pulled and stretched, and a heavy, momentary g-force, but it doesn't hurt. And then you just turn off. I found out from Dr Nesbitt that's the point when your body is being deconstructed at the subatomic level, every particle of your being turned into a massless energy packet and shot through subspace across thousands of light years in a millisecond. And then you turn back on again – it's like waking up really, really quickly, without the fatigue or the loss of orientation, you just know that you lost consciousness for a moment. Then it all reverses, and you step out of the other gate into a completely new location. And all of this happens in around a third of a second. It feels…well quite frankly, it feels amazing. I don't know that I'll ever get used to it. I don't know that I ever want to."

* * *

As Taylor's face emerged from the event horizon, he wondered for a brief moment if Sergeant Harriman had misread the M.A.L.P. and the winter storm was still in full swing. The air was cold, the wind was strong, and the sky was remarkably dark.

"Well, we certainly missed the worst of it, but delaying the mission by a day or so – like I suggested – would have been preferable, not least because it would be brighter." Nesbitt said, switching on his torch. Taylor saw what he meant. With his tactical light on, it was clear that small pockets of snow remained here and there, dotting the otherwise sodden landscape. The wind was still stronger than he liked, and the planet was distinctly chillier than the first time they had arrived, but if Nesbitt was right – and there was no reason to think otherwise – the weather would only improve. The light, however, was dim. P7T-434 was already out of the gas giant's shadow and therefore warmed by the sun, but it would be several hours before the star would actually illuminate this side of the planet.

"The Apollo is due in-system in two days. I thought we needed as much time as possible to look for anything of interest, so comfort wasn't exactly a priority, Al." Taylor said. "Everyone, begin unloading the F.R.E.D. and set up camp where we had our last one. We can't do much in this light except get comfortable." Taylor said.

"Major, these instruments ideally need setting up before daylight." Nesbitt said, indicating a few small metal boxes.

"And there's me thinking you wanted the mission delayed until it was light." Taylor replied.

"I made the best of a bad situation."

"Fine, I'll help you out. The rest of you get this camp established – we've got three and a half days here." Taylor said, turning the tactical light off and his torch on.

Taylor thought he heard Halverson mutter "Oh joy" as he adjusted the sling of his carbine so it was out of his way, over his back. He ignored the comment, and moved over to the containers Nesbitt had indicated, helping him lift them down.

"The plants. They're all…flat." Jarvis muttered, frowning. He was right. Every piece of alien bracken, even the moss-like plant underfoot, looked squashed compared to how the team remembered them.

"It's probably because of the weight of snow they had on them, or it might even be an evolved response to high winds – if they shrink, they are less likely to be torn to shreds or uprooted. Or all of the above." Moffatt suggested, staring at the plants.

"Kelly? We'll look at them properly in the morning…or daybreak…or first light…or whatever it's called!" Elise said, irritably. Gatelag could be disorienting in extreme cases – travelling instantly to a world that was experiencing a completely different part of its day could be remarkably disruptive, even more so when those planets had days that were of different length to Earth.

"Elise, if you think this is confusing, wait until you hear how long I reckon the day cycle is here." Nesbitt called, grabbing a large telescope.

Halverson was in the middle of yanking a huge olive green package off the F.R.E.D. and handing it to Jarvis. She stopped and stared at Nesbitt.

"How long?" she asked, apprehensively.

"Sixty-eight hours long…land of the midnight sun indeed!" Nesbitt called gleefully as he carried the telescope to a small pile of instruments he'd made.

"Two and a half days of daylight? Oh for God's sake!" she cried.

"Relax – we're not here for long, remember?" Moffatt added.

Always the healer, thought Taylor.

* * *

As he wandered, he began to wonder if Nesbitt was right – if he did indeed just want something to shoot at, or if the problem was deeper and less animalistic. The C8 carbine was beginning to feel like deadweight, more so since he'd attached the AG-C grenade launcher, and he was slowly coming round to the idea of dumping the rifles and going with P90s like most other SG teams, partly because he hadn't used the weapon once in any of the twelve missions he'd carried out for the SGC. While he considered this a major plus point – only foolish soldiers who'd never seen combat went looking for it – he couldn't help but feel an underlying tension. Although initially loathe to leave his SAS unit – to technically leave the SAS, he reflected – and transfer to the euphemistically named Special Warfare and Reconnaissance Service to lead one of the two British Stargate units, his introduction to the SGC changed everything. He couldn't see himself doing any other job for the rest of his life.

But he hoped it got interesting soon. While he was too experienced with real, terrifying combat and the indescribable horrors it brought to want to revisit it, especially on an alien world faced with unimaginable adversaries, he desperately wanted something to happen that would make this otherwise perfect assignment less anti-climactic.

"Oh God…another two days of this!" he muttered to himself, hoping he might even see some more of the strange little furry snakes nibbling on plant roots. Even they weren't that interesting – they had been found on a half dozen other worlds already, and they simply slithered away when anybody got anywhere near them. But he'd yet to see one this trip – Moffatt had theorised they went underground to survive the long night, and wouldn't come out until it was substantially warmer, or the plants had returned to their full height. Neither had really happened yet.

He'd already made three patrols, physically checking on each member of his team and learning the latest developments in their ongoing tasks. He had little else to do now but sleep, but he'd already had enough of that.

Once again, he realised, he was standing on an alien world light years from home, and he was bored out of his skull.

Nesbitt was holed up in one corner of the work tent, utterly engrossed in the data coming in from his widely spaced, remote controlled astronomical instruments. Taylor didn't understand how the telescopes could see anything during the day, but apparently they were flooding Nesbitt's laptop with information that had the physicist quite excited.

Halverson and Llewellyn were down in the small volcanic cave – it was still disputed as to whether to dub it Nesbitt's Nook, Al's Cove or something altogether less savoury – hoping to find more evidence of former Asgard presence.

And Moffatt and Jarvis had simply picked a direction and gone for a walk based on a comment Halverson had made on the possibility of the planet being inhabited after all, and the idea that they just hadn't explored far enough on their last mission; Moffatt had also expressed interest in searching for and collecting more plant and animal specimens. Taylor had approved the idea based on the possibility of finding more Asgard relics or evidence of their presence.

Patience was a virtue prized by the SAS, and one that Taylor had never had a problem with before.

But he suddenly realised that he'd never had a problem before because any SAS operation requiring patience that he'd been involved in had the bonus of anticipation and pay-off. Here, there were only possibilities – it was possible they might uncover a colossal abandoned Asgard laboratory, or the whereabouts of a lost Beliskner class vessel. There was also a distinct possibility that they would find nothing else of value and would ultimately have spent five days on a boring world for nothing. The only definite event he could look forward to here was a brief radio conversation with Colonel Ellis on the Apollo…in thirteen hours time.

He'd briefly considered setting up an impromptu firing range out of stones and passing the time testing his marksmanship. He'd almost gone through with it, until he considered the paperwork he would have to fill in to explain why his rifle had expended several magazines of ammunition. The ramifications of that would not be well received in Landry's office, the Pentagon or Whitehall.

That was it. Unless somebody made a discovery or requested his help, he'd just have to force himself to sleep until the Apollo exited hyperspace.

His mind made up, he turned on his heel and marched back to the camp, suddenly realising just how far he'd wandered from it. The Stargate was almost three quarters of a mile away.

* * *

"Ah, Major, I've been looking for you. I've found something very interesting – well, interesting to me only, probably, but nevertheless…the point is it's not there. It should be, but it's not. Maybe the Apollo can shed some light on it when they get here. It wouldn't be too difficult with their sensors."

Taylor stared blankly at the excited Scottish scientist. As he wandered back to camp, he'd seen the scientist burst out of the work tent and look around. As soon as he spotted Taylor he'd set off at a fast jog, waving a tablet PC over his head.

"Ah, uh…right. I'll explain." Nesbitt said, panting to get his breath back.

"It's probably best that you do – I don't need much of an excuse right now to shoot something, it'll be worth the paperwork."

Inhaling deeply, Al started walking alongside Taylor as they headed back to camp.

"Look…I took a deeper look at all the information we had on P7T-434 before we came back here, I was hoping something would jump out at me. And something did – just now. This solar system is binary."

"Two stars?"

"Exactly! Nothing special about that, about two thirds of worlds visited by SG teams are ultimately found to be in binary systems. Now, thing is, we can see one easily enough, the system's sun, up there." He indicated the glowing orb almost hidden behind grey cloud to illustrate his point. "But the Ancient database mentions a second star at a mean distance of 18 AU…look, point is, it should be perfectly visible, not quite like a second sun, but like an intensely bright, big star. And its position means it should be visible to us all the time from this point on the planet, even during the day and probably through cloud. I assumed the gas giant was blocking it last time, but I had the numbers wrong – we should have seen it. It should be perfectly visible, but there's nothing where it should be, and with the Ancient database's star data, I was able to pinpoint its position accurately."

Taylor knew what Nesbitt would say next.

"There's nothing there, is there?" he said.

"Nothing visible…" Nesbitt replied conspiratorially.

"Stellar drift? They have to recalculate Stargate coordinates when – "

"No no no. My instruments can detect it's gravity and it's effect on other bodies – it should have a little less mass than the sun up there – and there's definitely a mass that equals the missing star exactly where the missing star should be…just no star."

Taylor paused to consider this. Unlike several other SG team leaders, he was reasonably knowledgeable about a lot of the science that got thrown at him.

"Dyson sphere?"

"Possibly. Who knows? We need the Apollo to take a look."

Taylor shook his head.

"I don't know. I think Colonel Ellis is going to have his time taken up trying to find out what happened to the scout ship – if only to calm the Jaffa Council. I'll ask, but don't expect a result."

"Dave, we're talking about a missing star! You don't think that's curious enough to warrant investigation? It might well be linked to all the other weird occurrences – the tablet, the missing ship." Nesbitt said.

"I'll ask, just don't expect…what's that?"

Nesbitt, thrown by the abrupt break in the conversation and the subsequent derailment of his train of thought, took a moment to wonder what the SAS officer meant. He was pointing at something. Nesbitt glanced around, trying to follow the direction of the Major's outstretched finger.

"Uh, Dave…that's the Stargate."

The look he got from Taylor made him think he might just get shot after all, so he hurriedly turned to see if he could spot what Taylor was talking about.

"Oh. Oh my."


	3. Chapter 3

Nesbitt had called Halverson and Llewellyn out of the cave to examine Taylor's find. Upon reporting they had yet to find anything beyond shards of crushed and melted metal around the site of the tablet, Taylor had requested they devote their time and attention to his discovery, until they knew what it was. When he'd shown them what he was talking about, they'd both stood and stared, much like Nesbitt.

Attached to the bottom of the rear face of the Stargate was an object, clearly artificial in nature, constructed from a combination of a highly polished dark grey metal and a duller, brighter silvery-white metal. It was engraved with odd geometric markings and inlaid with thin slivers of translucent blue material resembling nothing so much as sapphire. A few small polished discs of what looked like opal dotted the device. Most importantly of all, when Taylor allowed his eyes to follow it, the device emerged from the ground like a mechanical plant and then disappeared into the gate, merging so perfectly with the naquadah casing there was no visible seam.

"Surprise surprise…with those markings, it's definitely Asgard." Halverson said, standing up.

"I agree. That looks a lot like their approach to design." Nesbitt said.

"And we didn't notice it before because…?" Taylor asked, shrugging.

"We were shivering away our lives in a lethal winter storm?" Halverson offered. "Or it might be because nobody explored around the gate last time we were here, or looked at the back of the gate. And most importantly…"

"The plants!" Llewellyn said with a look of sudden realisation.

"Precisely. Kelly was right – the plants shrink during a storm, and take a while to return to their full height. So it was neatly covered up last time by these fellas." Halverson finished, indicating the shrubs clustered around the Stargate.

Taylor wandered away from the group, who quickly began discussing the purpose of the Asgard technology. He touched his radio.

"Moffatt, Jarvis, how far out are you from camp?" he asked.

"About an hours travel so far, sir." Jarvis replied.

"Have you found anything yet?"

"No sir." Moffatt said.

"Well we have. Head back. Taylor out." Taylor turned and strode back to the gate.

"Right. Lieutenant, I want you examining the DHD. If the Stargate's being affected by alien technology – and before anyone utters a single smart-arse remark, I mean alien in the sense of not normally found around a Stargate – then the same could be true of the DHD. If it is, I want to know. Nesbitt, the Stargate is now your priority. Find out what that thing is and what it's doing. Halverson, I want you to assist as requested. These two might be relying on you to translate any Asgard 'Danger: One million volts' signs they find. And Llewellyn, Nesbitt? That means don't touch anything if you're not absolutely sure it's safe. Moffatt is still more than an hour away, so try not to get any life-threatening electrical shocks or radiation exposure until she's back, got it? Otherwise you're spending the last few days of your life in a hospital bed – in addition to the standard O'Malley's forfeit."

* * *

Taylor went out to meet Moffatt and Jarvis as they returned. It was immediately evident they had picked up the pace on the return journey.

"What did you find sir?" Moffatt asked, out of breath.

"There's something attached to the Stargate. Elise says it looks like it's been there for centuries, and I'm inclined to agree with her, although given how long-lasting and hard-wearing Asgard tech is, it's hard to tell." Taylor replied as the trio walked back to camp.

Llewellyn was sat with his legs crossed in front of the partially dismantled DHD, and out of the corner of his eye Taylor noticed Jarvis trying to hide how much this unnerved him. Taylor admitted that the idea of stripping the DHD to check for unconventional additional components was somewhat disconcerting, but he had total faith in Llewellyn's ability to rebuild the device. And if all else failed, they would simply have to ask the Apollo to alert the SGC to their predicament.

"You can bloody well bet they won't put this in Wormhole X-Treme." Llewellyn muttered from under the DHD.

Taylor turned incredulously, but it was Halverson who spoke.

"Don't tell me you watch that crap!"

Llewellyn grinned.

"You don't? It's so bad it's good, you know? Anyway, it was my sister got me into it, before I even heard of the Stargate for real. She's a mad keen Danning-Monroe shipper." he said, frowning at a small blue crystal before dropping it onto the mat he had spread out to hold the DHD components.

"I'm not even going to ask what the hell that means..." Taylor said, shaking his head and continuing towards the gate.

"She's got all the DVDs and everything. And you can't get the season two boxset for love nor money in Aberystwyth – and she tried both." Llewellyn continued, oblivious to Halverson's shocked expression.

"Got something." Nesbitt yelled.

Taylor, Jarvis and Moffatt were already jogging towards the Stargate when Nesbitt called out.

Walking to the back of the gate, they saw that the DHD wasn't the only dismantled piece of extraterrestrial technology in the area. Surrounded by open cases of equipment, Nesbitt sat on a camp stool with a tablet PC in his lap connected to a sensor probe that he touched to various points inside the mystery Asgard technology. The outer casing of the device had been carefully removed and discarded, leaving the interior exposed – a multitude of silver cables surrounding a large, black cylinder. All of these fed into the Stargate by some still unknown means.

Nesbitt didn't even look up as they approached.

"It's a power conduit, and it extends at least fifteen metres underground by my estimate. Plus, it's reasonably old, maybe a few thousand years." He said, still engrossed in the readings from his tablet PC.

"Power? There's an Asgard power source under our feet? Does that mean this gate might be able to dial Atlantis?" Taylor asked.

"Huh? No, nowhere close. And it isn't feeding power to the gate as a whole so it can form a long-distance wormhole, or jump tracks, it's feeding specific systems within the gate." He looked up, exasperated. "Look, I don't understand Stargates as well as Sam Carter or Rodney McKay…or even Bill Lee at a push, I'm better at Goa'uld and Asgard tech. But my best guess is that rather than trying to make an intergalactic connection, it's trying to make a local one, but through…I don't know how to describe it…through resistant subspace."

Seeing blank or confused faces around him, he went on.

"Look – regardless of the massive advances the SGC has made, Stargates are still largely a mystery to us, but one thing we're fairly sure of is that one of the first steps a Stargate takes to generating a wormhole is sort of 'weakening' the subspace path it wants to use so it's easier to forge the charged matter conduit. In this gate, those systems can be selectively overpowered. But you gain nothing by weakening it more, it actually makes things worse. So it must need to tunnel through a kind of hardened space-time, a local region of the universe that neither matter nor light can typically travel through. The effect would bleed through from subspace to normal space. Space itself would basically be solid, or at least, like a really viscous fluid. Either way, just as tangible as this rock, but totally indestructible and impassable – even with hyperdrive - without some major advanced technology at your disposal. Like this." he said, indicating the conduit.

"Is there such a thing as resistant subspace or did you just make that up?" Taylor asked.

"Well, there is in theory. It'd require a truly colossal power source though."

Halverson shook her head.

"Hang on. Hardened space-time? Resistant subspace? Why would there be a…barrier in space? Is it naturally occurring?"

"Unlikely." Nesbitt countered.

"Now…how far would it extend? I mean, you could just fly around it couldn't you? Unless…"

"Unless…unless it wasn't a plane, it was a three-dimensional shape, like a sphere, or a cube…that fits perfectly with the void we saw in the Goa'uld cartouche! The barrier would encompass all of it!" Nesbitt said excitedly.

"Wait. Wait wait wait! The tablet had the words 'protect', 'hidden' and 'of supreme importance' on it. If the Asgard modified a gate to tunnel through this barrier, what are the chances they put it there in the first place? If you're right, that could mean the Asgard isolated a region of space and a chunk of the gate network…to protect something at the ninth gate address? That they made a kind of vault? What could be so precious that they'd isolate it from the rest of the universe and make it so hard to get to?" Halverson said.

Nesbitt's eyes lit up.

"A weapon? A ship? A fleet? Maybe a really important piece of technology…" he murmured.

"Maybe a way of resurrecting the Asgard." Llewellyn said absently from behind the DHD, not noticing how this comment made everyone stop and think.

"So, let me see if I've got this straight. This gate has an Asgard optional extra that gives it, uh, extra punch to go through…" Taylor said, trailing off. His shoulders sagged and his eyes glazed like a particularly powerful and bad memory had just hit him.

"Resistant subpace. Still pure theory, it's all about vacuum modification, altering the fundamental properties of space-time by artificial means. It's related to how shields work, but way, way more advanced. It'd be functionally impenetrable." Nesbitt said helpfully, not realising what had just transpired.

"Al…this resistant subspace. What would happen if a ship were to encounter it?"

Nesbitt looked up, and his expression changed from cheery and tired to horrified and drained.

"Oh…God. It wouldn't stand a chance. It wouldn't matter if it was in hyperspace or normal space – it would be like…oh my God." He choked, realising what Taylor was getting at.

"Like hitting a brick wall at 1000mph? Like a fly slamming into a windscreen? Suddenly I've got a pretty bad feeling about what happened to the scout ship."

"The Apollo…" Jarvis said.

"She's still hours away, but you're right Sergeant, we need to warn her as soon as we can. Except we don't have a subspace radio." Taylor said. Stepping through the dormant gate, he headed for the DHD. "Lieutenant," Llewellyn poked his head around the side of the pedestal, a sensor probe clenched between his teeth, "We need the gate operational a.s.a.p. so we can tell the SGC to raise the Apollo and alert her to the possible presence of a barrier in or near this system."

"Right away sir. But I might have found something. I think…I think it's an Asgard control crystal. I'm not sure what it does, but my best guess based on where it's connected is that when a specific address is dialled, it sends a signal…somewhere."

Taylor paused.

"Somewhere being close to Nesbitt's subterranean power source I expect. Lieutenant, what do you want to bet the activating address is the ninth address on that tablet?"

Llewellyn simply grinned in response before turning back to the DHD to begin putting it back together. Taylor turned back to the rest of his team.

"Right…new plan, people. We've got at least ten hours in which to alert the Apollo, going by when the scout ship was likely destroyed. I want to dial the SGC as soon as we can – but first of all, I want to try and dial that ninth address."

"The SGC tried numerous times. And they even had the Alpha Site try, with no success – the assumption was that the gate was buried." Halverson called.

"Indulge me."

* * *

Taylor stood back, watching Halverson dial the gate while Llewellyn prepared the M.A.L.P. for another journey. Meanwhile, Nesbitt monitored readings from the power conduit and the DHD's extra control crystal simultaneously.

"Chevron 7 entered, I haven't activated the gate yet." Elise called over her shoulder. As per Nesbitt's request she was announcing every action and pausing after every entered glyph.

"Hmm, no…wait…there! Huge energy spike! The conduit's just given the gate's subspace attenuation array a major boost. Do it now, before it fades." Nesbitt shouted excitedly.

Elise nodded and depressed the large red dome in the centre of the DHD. The Stargate roared to life, casting the unstable vortex outwards.

"It worked…" Jarvis breathed.

"Lieutenant, at your leisure, send the M.A.L.P. through, and record everything. And try to be careful – that's U.S.A.F. property." Taylor said.

The silver, balloon-tyred vehicle jerked forward before picking up speed and smoothly entering the event horizon.

Taylor walked over to where Llewellyn had set up a makeshift M.A.L.P. control console using the F.R.E.D. remote and a pair of linked tablet PCs. Moffatt sat next to him, ready to interpret the probe's data.

"Receiving telemetry now."

Taylor stared at the two screens. A low-res video feed showing a dusty red landscape was accompanied by tables of atmospheric, gravitational and radiological data.

"Local conditions are tolerable…low end of habitability, but I'd guess there would be no real side effects. Gravity's a little too high for comfort."

"I've-suddenly-gained-a-few-pounds high or it-hurts-to-live high?" Jarvis asked.

"What are the numbers?" Taylor asked.

"Well, Earth has one gee, P7T-434 has zero point eight five gees, and this place," Moffatt said, indicating the readouts, "has one point three four gees. The oxygen level is marginally lower than Earth's, and carbon dioxide is up – anybody on the other side of that gate would find themselves getting tired more quickly. Biological scan is…clear. Physiologically at least, it should be safe to go through."

"There's a DHD present." Llewellyn observed.

Taylor knelt next to the ad hoc M.A.L.P. station.

"That might not mean much unless…wait, can you get it to check behind the Stargate, see if there's another Asgard conduit there?"

Llewellyn nodded enthusiastically, lightly touching the remote and guiding the unwieldy machine to the rear of the active Stargate.

"Dammit. One way journey." Taylor muttered. There was absolutely no sign of any Asgard tech interfacing with the gate.

"Uh, Major? Not necessarily." Nesbitt grinned.

* * *

Taylor emerged from the wormhole with his rifle slung and a large, green metal case carried between him and a Major of the United States Marine Corps. As they moved to one side to carefully set the case down, two more marines exited the wormhole, also carrying a case between them, but of different dimensions, and behind them there appeared another pair of marines, one brandishing an M249 machine gun, the other carrying what looked like an armoured silver briefcase. Even more marines followed, until there were twelve of them in total. The rest of Taylor's team had assembled near the gate when the first chevron lit.

"My God. I didn't think he'd ever actually go for it – you must have been pretty persuasive Dave. Or maybe you just grovelled pathetically." Nesbitt said, his eyes darting from the new equipment to the heavily armed, perpetually serious marines and then to Taylor.

"Uh…about fifty-fifty, and I'm sorry to say I played the General Bullock card. Landry wasn't thrilled with the idea – but he mellowed when he heard Elise's theory. So he authorised the mission eventually, but with certain conditions, obviously. This is Major Werner," he said, indicating the USMC officer, who nodded politely but curtly in response, "who's in command of SG-21, and this is Captain Kuznetsky of SG-16, both of them marine combat units. They're going to accompany us to PX2-95Y – the ninth address."

"Question: are they coming with us for our protection, or to prevent the U.K. laying claim to anything we find on 95Y?" Halverson said, raising her hand. Kuznetsky and Werner glanced at each other knowingly, but Taylor simply stared at Elise until she looked away uncomfortably. Taylor's stare was a weapon in and of itself.

"Another comment like that and you won't be finding out. Now," he said, addressing the rest of his team, "because it's technically classified U.S. military technology, Landry wasn't happy with the idea of loaning us a naquadah reactor, let alone a mark II, so one of their jobs will be to oversee its use and make sure we don't do anything nefarious with it." Taylor said as the Stargate shut down.

"Damn, and I was all set to spirit it away to Porton Down." Nesbitt said, smiling. Taylor glared at him, subtly shaking his head, and it became clear to Nesbitt very quickly that if the marines did possess a sense of humour, they kept it very securely hidden. All except Captain Kuznetsky, who tried and failed to hide a smile.

"Anyway – Dr Lee has checked your theories about the gate Al, and how to duplicate the effects on the other side, and he says they're accurate and correct. We have a mark II reactor, as you requested, a laptop with a dialling program set for this gate…and this." He said, gesturing to the marine with the briefcase. Obligingly, the marine stepped forward, raising the metal case. Taylor opened it.

Nesbitt and Llewellyn stepped forward. In the black foam within sat two small, identical white objects – smooth, elliptical and resembling opal.

"The one on the left is the original control crystal, the one on the right is the copy made by the Odyssey's core. Beamed straight into the gateroom – how's that for while-you-wait service?" Taylor said. "In addition, the Apollo has been apprised of the situation – she'll drop out of hyperspace about fifteen minutes earlier than planned, and proceed to the scout ship's last reported location under sublight propulsion. And, as you suggested Lieutenant, if she can't detect a barrier straight away, she'll fire her forward railguns at about one round every three seconds until she encounters something. Right then…we'd best get started."

* * *

Landry looked up from the mission report when he heard the knock on his office door.

"Enter." Landry said.

The grey metal door swung open and a flustered man in green fatigues and spectacles walked in, clutching a leather-bound notebook and a laptop computer.

"What can I do for you Dr Jackson?"

"Ah…General, I finished translating that Asgard tablet, as you requested. I had to cross-reference a lot of what I could make out with the Odyssey's Asgard core…it's, uh, it's not good."

* * *

As the Stargate closed, Taylor surveyed the area, feeling the higher gravity already. And it was cold.

"Damn it, can't we ever go anywhere nice?" Halverson said, hugging her arms for effect. Taylor ignored her, but a part of him found it funny that somebody of Norwegian descent would complain about the low temperature before anybody else.

The sky was dark and starless, lit only by three red-hued moons, but amber light spilled over the horizon – it was apparently dusk, and there was still just enough light by which to see. The ground was a craggy, uneven mix of dark red and grey rock, scattered with crimson dust and boulders, and punctuated with the occasional spiky grey plant – out towards the horizon sat low jagged mountains. Other than these short pieces of vegetation, there was no sign of life, past or present, wild or civilised. Something he couldn't quite put his finger on made him tighten his grip on his carbine and raise it ever so slightly – this mission suddenly didn't feel as exciting as it had done on the other side of that gate. He took a step backwards and spoke in a low voice over his shoulder.

"Right…Lieutenant Llewellyn, dial the gate back to P7T-434 now - I want to know as soon as possible if we need the reactor and crystal to get back."

"Yes sir." The commando engineer slung his rifle and crouched, withdrawing a tablet PC from his backpack with practiced ease before interfacing it quickly and expertly with the underside of the DHD. Diagnostics sprang to life almost immediately – this was one of the few toys the SGC allowed them access to, chiefly because it wasn't alien technology, just the culmination of more than a decade of working with Stargates and DHDs.

"Nesbitt – if we can't immediately dial out, I want you to stay here with Llewellyn and get that gate working."

"Understood Major."

Patiently, but surrounded by seventeen apprehensive faces, Llewellyn entered P7T-434's address into the DHD, glancing at the tablet each time. Each glyph lit in turn, both on the pedestal and on the Stargate. His heart pounding, he pressed the activation dome.

The stuttering, descending tone, a sound that struck Llewellyn as being similar to an aircraft engine spinning down, indicated a failed dialling. His heart sank.

"It won't dial sir. The inner track won't unlock." He said, turning to face Major Taylor. His expression was one of suppressed fear, and Taylor realised he wasn't the only one who felt uneasy.

Taylor stared blankly, feeling a knot in his stomach.

"Well, we left the WD-40 in the F.R.E.D…." he began. Llewellyn smirked, nervously. Taylor knew that even a seed of panic now, even in seasoned soldiers, could be disastrous. One quip, even a bad one, could go a long way to destroy that seed – or at least make it harder for it to germinate.

"It'll take a while to interface the new control crystal and get the naquadah reactor hooked up to the right parts of the gate. Maybe an hour, maybe two." Llewellyn said, producing a black nylon pack from his backpack – his toolkit.

"Right – while you're doing that, the rest of us will take the opportunity to do our recon, as ordered. And we'll start by finding the M.A.L.P."

Major Werner walked up to Taylor. In the background, Taylor could hear the DHD's front panel being removed.

"Given we don't know what the situation is with this place, I think I should assign a couple of my boys to watch yours." Werner said.

"Actually, I was going to suggest SG-16 guard the gate." Taylor replied, noting a third face registering concealed apprehension. Werner nodded and promptly spun to face the U.S. marines.

"Kuznetsky, SG-16 is on guard duty. The safety of the gate and these two men are now your responsibility."

* * *

"Walter, how long until the Apollo arrives at P7T-434?" Landry barked as he descended the stairs to the control room. Daniel followed hurriedly.

"Four hours seventeen minutes sir." Came the immediate response.

In the gate room, technicians prepped a M.A.L.P. in front of the ramp.

"Dr Jackson, you're sure about this?"

"Oh absolutely – my Asgard's not as good as my Ancient, but it's pretty clear from what I found in the Odyssey's database that PX2-95Y is most definitely _not_ an Asgard treasure trove."

Landry sighed.

"Walter – dial P7T-434 immediately, try and raise Major Taylor as soon as the gate dials, and tell Colonel Reynolds to have SG-3 on standby for an immediate and urgent departure. We may yet be able to stop them." Landry turned back to the archaeologist beside him. "Dr Halverson's theory was that the Asgard cut off an isolated region of space as a vault, with the 434 gate the only way in…to keep something safe."

"Yes I know, with the Asgard words for 'protect', 'hidden' and 'of supreme importance' on the tablet, the apparent barrier in space and the unusually modified gate needed to gain entry, that was my first conclusion too…unfortunately it appears Dr Halverson didn't think to check the Asgard database." Daniel said with his peculiarly fast delivery and emphasis.

"Actually, she tried, but wasn't permitted – she begged, pleaded, threatened and demanded to see it. She even had General Bullock raise hell about it, but the Pentagon refused her access."

Daniel closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. A younger version of him would have been shouting, gesticulating and stomping about the room upon hearing this, but years of dealing with the military had left him jaded when it came to the occasional outbreak of life-threatening bureaucracy and short-sighted stupidity.

"Let me guess – because she's not part of the U.S. military. General, she was right about one thing – the Asgard _were_ keeping something safe. Us."

* * *

"Man…this ain't good." The marine muttered, before silently signalling the rest of the two SG teams over to his position.

Major Taylor had ordered them all to fan out and begin searching for the M.A.L.P. that he had told Llewellyn to leave on automatic. The probe, having delivered a safe verdict for habitability, had been left to its own devices to search beyond the Stargate, maybe finding structures or evidence of civilisation in the process. If they were right about what PX2-95Y held, they couldn't waste any time.

"Oh boy." Jarvis said as he neared the marine. Taylor jogged up behind him, finding himself unusually out of breath. They were only about five hundred meters from the Stargate.

The M.A.L.P. was shredded, a twisted wreck. Its steel plating was ripped and shattered, its instruments smashed to fragments and its arm reduced to deformed scrap, the almost unrecognisable grabber dangling by a single wire.

"Well…maybe it fell." Halverson said, unconvinced by her own statement.

Taylor scanned the area. While the ground was uneven and strewn with boulders, the dead M.A.L.P. was still upright and nowhere near any drop higher than Taylor's knee.

"From two feet? Expendable as they are, these things are designed to survive far, far worse than that. No…this was not an accident. Something found this and destroyed it…so I say we go and find it."

Hearing Halverson start to complain, Taylor spoke again quickly.

"Listen, it'll take Llewellyn and Nesbitt at least another hour to get the gate working. Now, we can go back there, wait around doing nothing and go home, and have nothing to report to Landry and Bullock. Or, we can do what we came here to do, what we're paid and trained to do, and go and explore. Maybe what happened to the M.A.L.P. was just unfortunate – caught somebody by surprise or something. They're not exactly friendly looking contraptions. We will continue with our recon, understood?"

At Taylor's signal, the four members of SG-27 and the six of SG-21 moved off, heading deeper into the increasingly craggy terrain, some of them casting nervous, unconvinced glances back at the remains of the M.A.L.P.

* * *

The Stargate illuminated the gate room, but Landry's attention was focussed elsewhere.

"Looks like they've already gone through, General. Their camp's here, and most of their supplies, but not them. We tried to dial PX2-95Y a few minutes ago, but nothing happened. Best we can tell, there's a problem with the gate – maybe the control crystal wasn't put back properly." Colonel Reynolds said. With no M.A.L.P. present, SG-3 could only communicate by radio.

"Alright. I'll send for Dr Lee and Sergeant Siler and have them join you in a few minutes. Landry out."

The puddle hadn't even evaporated before Landry turned to Sergeant Harriman. Standing in the doorway of the control room in full offworld gear were Dr Lee and Sergeant Siler, each carrying a heavy case of equipment and wearing expressions of patient expectation.

Landry blinked, and turned silently to Sergeant Harriman.

"I sent for them five minutes ago sir." The gate technician said without meeting Landry's gaze, or even looking up from his work.

Landry shook his head in bemusement. Three years at the SGC and of all the fantastic, terrifying and unbelievable things he had dealt with, one of the few he still hadn't got used to was Walter Harriman's apparent precognitive ability.

* * *

Llewellyn was on his back, hands plunged into the crystalline depths of the DHD. It's dimly glowing interior cast nowhere near enough light to work by, so he had a narrow torch clenched between his teeth, and Nesbitt sat next to the pedestal with both a large, heavy duty torch and a tablet PC.

"Gareth, you do realise that in this gravity, both the torch and my arm weigh a third more than usual?" Nesbitt said as his arm wavered.

"So, what, your arm's getting tired? Can't say I'm surprised Al, given how little exercise you get and how much food you put away. Hey, I've got an idea – hold the torch in your mouth, there's no way in hell your jaw will ever get tired." The engineer replied.

"Oh ha bloody ha. How about I drop this torch between your legs, and we see what a thirty-four percent weight increase does for your pain receptors."

Llewellyn chuckled to himself.

"Take this." He said, handing a long orange crystal to Nesbitt, who placed it with a selection of other, different crystals on a spread out jacket next to him. As he did so, he noticed Captain Kuznetsky wandering towards him. Most of the marines of SG-16 had donned night vision gear and taken to covering a specific arc around the Stargate.

"How's it going?" he asked. Kuznetsky seemed unusually talkative and friendly compared to the rest of the US marines Nesbitt had encountered since joining the SGC, a difference he preferred.

"Oh you know, slowly enough that my arm will atrophy before this so-called engineer has even come close to installing the Asgard crystal." Nesbit said, making a show of supporting the torch-bearing arm. Llewellyn shook his head, and Kuznetsky grinned. He squatted next to the jacket with the crystals and nodded towards them.

"Tell me one thing – in all my time at the SGC, nobody's ever told me...what the hell is crystal technology? Sounds almost new age to me." He said, idly picking up a short, irregular red crystal and turning it around in the torchlight. Trying to hide his alarm, Nesbitt gently reached out and took it from him.

"No offence, but if anything happens to any of these, we're going to get to know this world intimately. I don't want to risk it, personally. As for crystal tech, I know what you mean, but you couldn't be more wrong. Basically, these crystals are awesomely sophisticated optical computers – that is, they use light rather than electricity, which opens up avenues for computation you can't imagine – combined with a power system." Nesbitt said.

"Al – hand me the Asgard crystal. I'm ready to install it." Llewellyn said, holding out his hand.

Frowning, the physicist placed the white oval in Llewellyn's palm.

Five minutes passed as Llewellyn patiently restored each of the removed crystals to their proper locations. As he slotted the final crystal into position, he heard a somewhat familiar steady bass note, accompanied by a flash of bright white light behind the DHD, both fading out quickly. Llewellyn, Nesbitt and Kuznetsky stood up suddenly, staring in disbelief.

"What the hell did you just do Gareth?" Nesbitt murmured, not taking his eyes off the ground behind the DHD, and the new Asgard crystal that had beamed in from nowhere.

Nesbitt approached the palm sized oval stone. Kuznetsky and Llewellyn stood still, trying to work out what had just happened.

"Doctor, right now I think we should report this, and quickly." Kuznetsky said with a degree of urgency in his voice. Nesbitt nodded as the marine officer stood up and clicked his radio.

"Major Taylor, we just had something very strange happen here…Major Taylor. Major Taylor, come in." Frowning, Kuznetsky checked his radio. "Major Werner, this is Captain Kuznetsky, please come in."

He turned to face the physicist and engineer.

"I think we may have a big problem."


	4. Chapter 4

"What's that?" Moffatt said quietly, pointing.

They had been walking for a while, the terrain always getting lower, but also increasingly rocky. The sky was now pitch black, so Taylor had ordered every member of both teams to don their night vision goggles. It would be bad enough in normal gravity, but when it was thirty-four percent higher than Earth's, a single slip would be considerably more painful and damaging here.

Taylor followed Moffatt's outstretched finger to a distant, faint cluster of lights. It looked like a small outpost or village from this distance. Moffatt's eyesight and observational skill were two more reasons why Taylor was glad to have the medic on his team, because the buildings were over a mile away and at least four hundred feet below them – they had only recently discovered they were on a plateau above a vast undulating plain. The plain itself seemed to be mostly featureless, except here, where it was positively littered with rocks, boulders, small hills, trenches and large clumps of the spiky grey shrub they had encountered – it all had an oddly unnatural feel to it.

Slipping his goggles up and turning them off, Taylor pulled a set of high-tech binoculars from his tactical vest and raised them to his eyes. With their own in-built light amplification active, he zoomed in on the light cluster.

"I think we can safely say we've found something. Good spot, Kelly."

The buildings were squat, angular and tough-looking – resembling reinforced military bunkers more than anything else. Their walls were angled at forty-five degrees to the ground, made out of a combination of what looked like concrete and steel. Ragged banners fluttered from strange looking flagpoles. He clicked the night vision off. With the structure's own surprisingly dim lighting, he could just make out colours – browns, reds, blacks and bright, shining silver.

Taylor lowered the binoculars, and carefully made his way to the edge of the precipice, lying down and raising the binoculars again. Alongside him, Halverson, Moffatt and Werner followed suit, producing their own binoculars. Jarvis and the five marines stayed back and kept watch for any unwelcome surprises.

"Definitely not Asgard in design, but it looks like reasonably new construction, and the design would suggest a race with a tech level somewhere close to our own." Halverson whispered.

"Looks to me like a bunker, or some kind of military installation." Werner said.

"So why aren't all the buildings inside that fence? Looks almost like a farm or a ranch in a way."

The fence in question was at least three metres high and very long. It appeared to be composed of jagged metal spars, and it seemed to completely enclose the odd looking area of boulders and rugged terrain beneath them, an area of several square miles. Only two of the flat bunker like buildings sat inside the perimeter.

"No...no, not a farm. It's more like a zoo enclosure...or a safari park. It's like an artificial environment." Halverson said, perplexed.

"I think you're right. So what are they keeping there? And who's they?" Taylor said.

"I don't know if you're right about that – I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't that look like a gun turret on the roof of the biggest building?" Werner said, fidgeting uncomfortably. Something felt very wrong about this to him.

"Yeah, but I don't know what kind of weapon. Looks almost…wait…movement." Moffatt breathed.

"Got it." Taylor whispered, switching back to night vision and zooming the stabilised binoculars in on Moffatt's second catch of the day.

The smaller of the two structures within the fence had just opened on one side, and out of this opening a man sprinted. He ran wildly, looking back over his shoulder as he did. For a minute, they watched as he tried to get as far away as possible from the building he'd come from, hiding behind rocks before moving on, searching desperately for a good hiding place.

The small building opened again.

"Oh my God." He murmured to himself, hearing similar remarks from Halverson, Moffatt and Werner.

The creature exiting the building was bipedal, but otherwise completely inhuman, covered as it was in dense fur. With its hunched back and long horizontal neck belying its height, Taylor couldn't tell how large it was, but compared to the human who had exited minutes before, he guessed it stood at least eight feet off the ground. It didn't help that it wore strange, asymmetrical armour over its torso, apparently consisting of strips of hide and metal plates. The alien possessed long but immensely powerful looking front limbs, each ending in a hand with three digits. It's rear legs were hunched, like those of a dog, and built in a way that suggested enormous power. Behind it a long, thick tail swayed. But the single most disconcerting thing was its head. He'd seen a head like that before – an angular, evil looking skull with two circular eyes that burned brightly in the infrared of night vision, between which there was a long tapered muzzle, and at the back of the skull, two sharply pointed, forward facing ears.

"Oh my God…that looks a lot like a…a…" Halverson began.

"A werewolf." Taylor finished. He shuddered involuntarily, despite himself. Something told him what they were witnessing would not end well, but he knew he couldn't take his eyes off what was about to happen.

"It's...hunting him."

As the lone human stumbled through the rough terrain, Taylor and his team could only watch as the alien werewolf moved closer and closer, circling around the doomed man with blinding speed. Every time he snapped his head to look, the creature was already gone, moving silently and swiftly to its next position. Every time this happened, it moved closer to its prey.

The man must have known there was no hope – he stopped, bent down, and picked up the largest, most pointed rock he could find. There was no way he could have known the alien was directly behind him, creeping steadily closer, now only twenty feet away from him. It lunged, rushing towards its prey, all pretence of stealth forgotten. The man whirled at the sound of his attacker.

"We have to help him!" Moffatt hissed.

Taylor was already bringing his carbine up and sighting through it when he heard the terminal, terrified scream intermingle with vicious snarling. The scream ended abruptly, replaced with a chilling gurgle. Taylor let the carbine drop – shooting the creature now would serve little purpose except to give away their position.

"There's another one." Halverson said, trying to disguise the fear and horror in her voice.

The lycanthropic alien wandered into the brightly lit area between the buildings, it's arms cradled a weapon resembling a huge, vicious looking battle-axe or halberd. A second, larger werewolf without a weapon but with more armour appeared from a different building, approaching the first with speed. As it neared the first it struck with a ferocious backhand – the smaller alien dropped it's weapon as it flew backwards several metres under the force of the blow.

"In this gravity…how strong is it to do that?" Werner asked hesitantly. Nobody answered, because nobody wanted to consider how disturbing the answer would be.

As they watched, unable to look away, the fight continued. The two aliens were ripping each other apart now, slashing and clawing at each other with savagely long talons, landing open palm punches and trying to topple each other with surprisingly intricate and well executed sweeps and kicks. This went on for almost five minutes, with neither combatant appearing fatigued or troubled by its injuries, the fight losing none of its ferocity.

The larger alien toppled the smaller one with a swift kick and rushed in with his jaws gaping. Even at this distance, Taylor could see row upon row of evil-looking fangs, more like the mouth of a dinosaur than a dog. The long, curved fangs sank into the neck of the fallen alien, decisively ending the fight with a pool of blood on the sandy ground. The smaller werewolf twitched for a moment, before becoming still. Within seconds, a dozen more of the aliens poured out of the buildings to surround the victor.

"I think we just saw somebody being promoted." Halverson suggested.

"I've suddenly got a bad feeling about this – I don't think they're going to be friendly." Taylor said. Nobody disputed or contested this idea.

"Major…I think we should consider getting back to the gate and getting off this planet." Werner said, with an urgency in his voice that Taylor completely understood.

"I think you're right. Jarvis?" Taylor replied.

The former Royal Marine Commando stood up from where he'd been crouching, with his night vision goggles down, and moved over to his commanding officer.

"We're leaving, I want you on point. Take – "

"Major…" Halverson murmured fearfully.

"Wait. Take the same path we took, as soon as – "

"Major, they just looked straight at us. They know we're here. They're pointing at our position and talking. And…oh no. Some of them are running this way. Fast."

Taylor's blood chilled. What had changed? What had happened to alert the aliens to their presence? There had been no radio transmissions, nobody had raised their voices – and if the wolf analogy held, the wind was blowing the wrong way for them to have picked up their scent. All that had changed was that Jarvis had stood up.

"Jarvis – are your goggles using IR illumination?" Taylor whispered hoarsely.

"Yes sir."

"Turn it off! Everybody, turn off anything putting out infrared light, now! They can see infrared!"

Hurriedly, every soldier struggled to disable the IR lamps on their goggles and turn off infrared range finders. Moffatt and Halverson had nothing emitting – the binoculars worked exclusively with ambient radiation. All they could rely on for navigation now was passive infrared and light amplification.

"Dave…they're closing fast." Halverson said anxiously. She was right; he could already hear the aliens howling and snarling as they drew near at terrifying speed.

"Everyone, back to the gate, now!" Taylor said. He slipped his night vision goggles down, careful to make sure they weren't emitting anything, and watched as the rest of the two teams jogged past him before setting off himself.

"Nesbitt, Llewellyn, how's the gate coming?" he said into his radio as he tried to catch up with the rest of his team.

There was no response.

* * *

"Jarvis, keep trying to raise the gate, the terrain may be blocking our signal."

Having found a route back up a thirty-foot rock face, jumping and crawling from boulder to boulder, both teams had resumed jogging, but the Stargate was at least twenty minutes away. Behind them, they could hear the aliens – they were close. The lycanthropic creatures were not coming to welcome the explorers, that much was obvious to Taylor. As he picked his way through the last section of the heaped rocks, feeling pebbles and fragments of rock slip away under his feet, he heard and felt hundreds of small metallic objects moving at incredible speed slam into the rock all around him. He saw a brief flash of fiery orange. Close by, one of the marines screamed. They were being shot at by alien projectile weapons.

"Keep moving but return fire!" Taylor yelled, pulling himself back onto reasonably level ground. He saw that the marine who'd been hit wasn't down, but he was clutching a bloody wound in his shoulder and trying to raise his M4 carbine. Ahead of him, Jarvis stopped, turned and sprayed the LMG behind Taylor. Something alien yelped angrily.

Taylor kept moving. As sporadic gunfire erupted around him, his radio crackled.

"Llewellyn, is that you? Stand by." he yelled over the bark of several assault rifles. He spun, quickly surveying the scene.

"Jarvis! Rocket, there!" he yelled, pointing. Instantly, the sergeant slung his LMG even as he shrugged the AT4 launcher off his shoulder, raising and aiming the disposable anti-tank and anti-structure weapon in one fluid movement. Within three seconds, the missile had left the tube and streaked towards Taylor's designated target.

Taylor watched as the warhead slammed into the unstable outcrop they had just climbed and detonated, but he wasn't taking any chances. Swiftly, he discharged the compact grenade launcher on his carbine, watching the 40mm high explosive grenade smash into the exact same spot. Unable to deal with the overwhelming explosive force, the mass of rock separated as the Major had intended, taking most of the rock face with it – including the route the humans had used to climb. A dense wave of boulders, stone and dirt rained down on the approaching horde of slavering alien warriors, crushing and maiming many of them and making it almost impossible for the rest to follow straight away. Taylor felt somewhat gratified – not only had his desperate plan worked and bought his people more time to escape, but Sergeant Jarvis hadn't paused or questioned the order for a second.

"Everybody, move, move, move! Llewellyn, go!" Taylor yelled as he resumed moving towards the Stargate.

"Sir! We've been trying to get in contact with you! SG-3 dialled us fifteen minutes ago. They're still on the other side of the gate, they were sent to retrieve us or at least warn us. Dr Jackson discovered something about the tablet."

"Let me guess – 'under no circumstances go to PX2-95Y, lest you get hunted by alien werewolves'. Thanks, we've just discovered this for ourselves. If you encounter them, they have natural night vision, and can see infrared. Plan accordingly."

"Sir, there's something else. Something strange happened when I installed the crystal." Llewellyn said.

"Lieutenant, unless it is extremely relevant to our current situation, I think it had best wait. E.T.A. sixteen minutes. Don't dial the gate until you see us coming, I don't want to risk any of these things getting through. That's assuming the gate's working… the gate is working, isn't it?" Taylor responded.

"We dialled out successfully, but there's a hitch. We'll have to leave the control crystal in this DHD – the gate shuts down the moment it's removed." Llewellyn said.

Taylor was still jogging, but between the high gravity, low oxygen and rough terrain, he was already out of breath. But his brain was still as sharp as ever.

"Negative – I don't want them following us through. If you can't get the gate to stay open without the crystal for one trip, I want you to load the DHD with all the C4 and demo charges you can, and have a detonator ready. Once we're through, we'll blow it from the other side, and if necessary, the naquadah reactor as well. With luck, that'll seal the gate. Taylor out."

The terrain was tough, and it reminded Taylor of Afghanistan's mountains. Although the incline wasn't much by Earth standards, the high gravity and low oxygen made it feel far worse. They were retracing the same route they'd already travelled, so he knew the ground levelled out soon, but his lungs were still aching. Ahead of him, he saw that Moffatt had used her initiative, and brought the oxygen tank from her medical kit with her, and was now dispensing a little to each member of the team.

After a few minutes, Major Werner fell in next to him.

"Your stunt with the rocket bought us a little time, but not much. We can hear more of those damn things approaching from all sides, how the hell are we going to last another twelve minutes?" he asked.

"I have a few ideas."

Taylor stopped and held his breath. From behind him, he could hear something new, a deep, droning hum. Something that wasn't being made by a creature, but by a machine, and getting closer. He looked over his shoulder, and immediately wished he hadn't.

The alien aircraft was only a few hundred metres away when it fired. Two bolts of bright blue-white light appeared from its underside and sped towards them like miniature comets.

"Everybody down!" Werner yelled as the alien missiles streaked closer, slamming into the rock nearby, showering Werner and Taylor with hot gravel. The ground shook with tremendous force as two blue fireballs erupted. As the craft sped closer, Taylor got a good look at it. It was shaped like an arrowhead split down the middle, with a bullet placed between the two halves.

Taylor suddenly realised that the two points of the split arrowhead were spitting orange tracer – no, not tracer he thought. Every single minute projectile was glowing orange.

Thousands of tiny explosions in the rock were racing towards them. They were being strafed.

"Open fire!"

As the 5.56mm rounds from six carbines and two light machine guns filled the sky, the skin of the alien fighter erupted in sparks. But the craft continued to advance, apparently unfazed by the incoming fire. Cascades of orange and yellow poured off its skin as it sped closer, and Taylor wondered if their weapons had any effect whatsoever. As it came close enough for Taylor to contemplate using his grenade launcher on it, a trio of small explosions signified a successful hit, and the craft abruptly veered away trailing black smoke, the strafing run ended – to Taylor, the pilot presumably had more important things to worry about than shooting the alien invaders. One of the marines whooped with joy as the aircraft careered wildly around the sky, it's engines screaming, before dropping suddenly and smashing into the rock half a mile away with a huge orange and black fireball.

"Keep moving! The ones behind us won't take long to catch up." Taylor yelled. Let's just hope there aren't any in front of us, he thought.

The column of ten exhausted humans traipsed across the red rock. The ground had almost levelled out now – they weren't moving uphill anymore, but the terrain was still pitted and craggy, and they had a dense field of boulders to pass, still with five minutes to go before they were back at the gate. Taylor had seen this terrain travelling the other way, but they'd picked a different route.

Somebody screamed bloodily, the sound disappearing into the darkness.

"Garcia!" somebody shouted in an American accent.

Adrenaline flooded tired bodies. Nervous marines raised their assault rifles, they could hear the enemy, they knew one of them had fallen, but they didn't know where the enemy was.

From his vantage point at the rear, Taylor could see better than the others, and his blood ran cold as he saw dozens of pairs of bright, glowing eyes in the darkness to both sides of the column, hiding amongst the boulders. The aliens flanked them – Taylor knew now they weren't just being attacked, or repelled as invaders, they had been hunted from the beginning, the various attacks herding them. These creatures were more like wolves than he had thought; they were also intelligent, sapient, technically advanced, but still consummate pack hunters – and the thought was terrifying.

And one of the pairs of eyes was sprinting for the middle of the column – Halverson and a marine in its sights.

"Plan B, flanks!" he yelled.

Every human suddenly slipped their night vision goggles up and sparked a magnesium survival flare. The light of nine flares was bright enough to force them to squint, and Taylor was counting on the sudden bright light having blinded the werewolf aliens, especially in the infrared spectrum. Mere seconds later, a dozen grenades flew through the air into the boulder field – some of them, Taylor knew, were standard fragmentation grenades that would hopefully injure or kill enough of the aliens to improve their own odds of survival, and some were flash-bangs, intended to further disorient their attackers with blinding light and sound.

The aliens were screaming, and Taylor could now see most of them without night vision, clutching their eyes and howling. Some of the marines opened fire, and he could even hear the report of at least one pistol.

There was only one more element in Plan B. The humans were exhausted, but under threat of being mauled and eaten by alien werewolves, they found they could produce a surprising turn of speed.


	5. Chapter 5

"They're right behind us! DIAL THE GATE!" Jarvis bawled as he sprinted towards the DHD, periodically firing his LMG blindly into the darkness to either side of him.

Llewellyn, Nesbitt and SG-16 had been busy – upon hearing Taylor's description of the creature's natural night vision and apparent susceptibility to bright light, they had dropped every flare they had around the gate, and planted Claymores.

Llewellyn stood in front of the DHD, and even as he sprinted, his lungs burning, Taylor could see the chevrons on the gate lighting. Behind him, something was snarling and gaining on him, so he spun quickly and squeezed the trigger on his carbine, firing blindly into the night – in the muzzle flash of his rifle, he caught a brief glimpse of innumerable teeth of impossible sharpness and two blazing discs locked on him, mere feet away. He was facing forwards again and running with every last joule of energy he could muster, his muscles screaming even before he heard something snarl and yelp and crash into the ground right behind his feet. He'd emptied almost half his magazine before the creature dropped.

With a roar, the gate activated. Claymores detonated and orange tracer fire leapt from the marines stationed there into the darkness – the aliens were closing from all sides. Almost solid lines of orange tracer streaked the other way many times faster, and Taylor heard SG-16's marines yelling in panic and screaming in agony. He knew from grisly experience that some of those screams were final.

With so many flares around the active gate, Taylor could see the DHD's front panel was off, the glowing crystal interior mostly hidden behind a dozen blocks of C4 stuffed into any cavity in the device the engineer could reasonably fill.

Taylor wanted to scream to everyone to get through the gate, but his lungs wouldn't let him. As he careened headlong towards the inviting blue pool, his vision beginning to blur, he noticed everyone was already running into the gate, many of them still firing, and dragging bodies through, a few of them still screaming.

A long burst of carbine fire screamed past his ear, followed by the sound of a heavy body hitting the ground behind him. A bestial gurgle signified the assailant's death, but Taylor could now hear distant deep humming getting closer.

"Sir! You're the last one!" Llewellyn said, lowering his gun and handing the detonator to Taylor. As soon as the small electronic device had passed into Taylor's hand, the Lieutenant sprinted for the gate, helping Jarvis drag a marine through.

Taylor didn't stop moving, even as the ground around him began to explode with alien weapons fire. Lines of orange stitched the air in front of him, and he heard something hit the DHD with considerable force, but he continued heedless. He risked a quickly glance over his shoulder, and he knew the view he saw would give him nightmares for a long time. Dozens of the wolf aliens were closing in on him at speed. A vast shape loomed over them in the sky, and Taylor realised with a shock that it was a tremendously large vehicle. Forked dart shapes sped towards him even as a wave of snarling fur sprinted forwards. His body wanted so desperately to stop, to give up, but he powered forward, feeling the comforting sensations of gate travel…

…and the cold, bright, oxygen filled environment of P7T-434. His legs gave out and he collapsed, his lungs sucking down crisp, freezing air like he'd been underwater for an hour, but he knew there was one last thing to do.

His thumb wouldn't move.

With a supreme effort, he willed the oxygen-starved digit into life, throwing the switch on the detonator.

Nothing happened. The wormhole's event horizon didn't destabilise and evaporate as he'd expected it would with its DHD and power source knocked out, there was no hail of shrapnel. Instead the Stargate remained open, and this gave Taylor a sinking feeling.

Panting, and with Jarvis hauling him to his feet, he held out the detonator to Llewellyn.

"It didn't blow…it didn't blow…we've got incoming hostiles!" he blurted, breathlessly. He realised with a start that the alien weapon's fire that struck the DHD must have destroyed the detonator – Llewellyn was too good an explosives expert to have fouled up the charge or detonator, he could almost do it in his sleep.

"Major, we're ready for them."

His vision and thinking clearing as oxygen returned to his system, Taylor scanned the area. He wondered how accurate Colonel Reynolds' assessment was – the gate was still open, but nothing had yet come through, and for a reason he couldn't place his finger on, that worried him more than if the werewolf aliens had immediately followed them through.

A space had been cleared in front of the gate – a kill zone tens of metres deep. SG-3 were already prepared, the elite, highly experienced unit's combined small arms trained on the still active gate. SG-27's tents had been hastily dismantled to give clearer lines of fire, but the F.R.E.D. and the crates it had carried were further back now, employed as cover by SG-3. Spread out through the heather were two additional SG teams – one of them Taylor recognised immediately as SG-26, the first British Stargate team, bizarrely wearing desert gear and looking tired. As soon as he spotted Major Hamilton's face, his radio crackled.

"Next time you escalate a major crisis, can you do it after my team have had at least an hour to recuperate? We barely got back through the gate before we heard what was happening."

Taylor simply grinned in response, too tired to do anything else.

The other SG team he thought was the SGC's one and only US Army team. But there were more. Taylor knew it was standard procedure that at all times the SGC maintained a sizeable immediate response combat team, two squads of elite, heavily armed USAF Security Force airmen, ready to charge through the gate at a moment's notice. He also knew that their chief role in the SGC was to rescue and provide covering fire for pinned down SG teams, and that they were drawn from the same platoon that also supplied the gate room defence teams. He was simply surprised and grateful to see them here, wondering how Landry had decided that the situation would warrant their presence.

Colonel Reynolds had the three remaining marines of SG-16 alongside his team, one of whom was a bloodied but able Captain Kuznetsky in the middle of reloading his rifle. A terrified looking Dr Lee crouched behind a stack of metal cases towards the rear of the camp, holding a Beretta in one shaking hand. Next to him, Sergeant Siler was aiming at the gate with a P90, an open crate next to him filled with the compact weapons. Taylor realised that SG-21 had been reduced to two marines, one of them injured – and neither of them Major Werner. Taylor felt a pang of guilt when he saw that his team were all present, even if they were far from unscathed.

Despite the left arm of his fatigues being ripped and saturated with blood, Jarvis half dragged and half supported him to where the rest of SG-27 had collapsed. Already, the big sergeant was readying his Minimi LMG, crouching behind the nearby F.R.E.D. as he discarded the near empty box magazine for a fresh one and pulled a spare AT4 launcher from the squad cargo vehicle. Moffatt was already bandaging his injuries, but the sergeant barely noticed.

With oxygen flooding his system, Taylor was already beginning to feel better – years of mountain climbing and marathon running had given him a remarkable recovery rate. Quickly and expertly, he pulled the magazine out of his weapon and slotted a fresh one in, before opening the grenade launcher and inserting a 40mm shell. Reynolds handed him a quartet of M16 magazines taken from an ammunition box at his feet, which he gratefully took and stored in his tactical vest.

"You can thank Dr Jackson for this little gathering, Major. He's the one who convinced Landry to commit all available troops – and he's the one who'll be in the general's office if he's wrong."

"Colonel – I think it's safe to say that won't be happening if what we saw is any indication. This might not even be enough, but it's a start."

He turned to Moffatt, Halverson and Nesbitt.

"You three, grab P90s and move towards that hill – take Dr Lee and SG-26's specialists with you, and keep moving. If we can't hold them off here, the Apollo will be in orbit in a few hours. They'll beam you out." he said. "Llewellyn, Jarvis, stay with me."

"One moment sir – Doctor, the crystal. I think it's important." Llewellyn said, handing the new Asgard crystal to Nesbitt.

"What the hell..." Taylor muttered, staring at the artefact with surprise.

"With your permission sir, I'll explain later."

Taylor nodded.

The gate rippled.

"Here they come!" Reynolds shouted.

The aliens stepped through, snarling and brandishing their battle-axe weapons like a Jaffa staff, and Taylor suddenly realised that the axe-head was little more than a bayonet on a rifle as the high-pitched scream of the weapon filled his ears. The weapons fire, eerie in night, was somehow more chilling in bright daylight. There was almost no space between each round, just an almost unbroken line of red hot projectiles screaming out of the axe-gun's barrel. The closest thing he could compare it to, in both sight and sound, was the fire from a Phalanx C-RAM demonstration, a concentrated burst of blazing orange lines.

As the guns swung around, spraying the defender's positions, Taylor got his first proper look at their attackers.

It was the first time he'd seen the creatures in full daylight. Up close, they looked far more alien, and threatening, than they did through night vision goggles or binoculars. But the overall werewolf image was still hard to shake. One of the two wolves had fur that was a dark grey-black, the other silver and grey. Both had pupil-less eyes a deep shade of orange. But strangest of all, their teeth and claws were silver – bright, almost polished silver. An asymmetric, chaotic uniform of hide and metal plating partially covered both, and he noticed on one of them that half of its face bore a bizarre tattoo like marking – an intricate pattern of jet black skin where no fur sprouted, a brand.

"Fire!"

The armour plate on the chest of the black-furred werewolf erupted in a shower of sparks as the first burst of fire found its mark and dropped the snarling alien. The silver one began to sprint forwards with startling speed, but combined fire toppled it quickly. Two more were right behind it, firing their odd axe-guns wildly – somebody screamed as the almost solid looking streams of orange projectiles found a target. As they fell, four more appeared.

Quickly, the aliens began to emerge from the gate faster than the massed guns of the humans could fell them, and even with the humans staggering their reloading, the wolves were using the lull in gunfire to surge forward with unnatural speed. They were getting too close, and as if to confirm this, he saw one of the lupine beasts run up to a terrified airman desperately trying to change the magazine on his MP5, raise it's axe-gun above it's head with a roar and bring the massive blade swinging down with horrific speed. The airman disappeared under the blade, the view thankfully hidden by the dense waist high vegetation. Taylor winced.

"Fall back!" he heard Reynolds shout. Taylor crouched, sighted, and loosed off a burst. The werewolf's chest plate danced with sparks as the bullets impacted, but the creature simply turned and fired in his direction. Cursing, Taylor dodged the stream of orange as it tore the heather to shreds where he'd been. Picking himself up, he crouch-walked backwards, snapping off another burst at a different werewolf. Looking for cover, he half-saw the recipient of his gunfire stagger and clutch it's chest before continuing forward unfazed. Taylor cursed again – they were harder to kill than he thought, that was why the SGC soldiers been so quickly overwhelmed. It was looking like it took almost half a magazine to put one of them down. He grasped the pistol grip of the AG-C launcher on his weapon and pulled the trigger.

The 40mm high explosive shell landed amidst a trio of the warrior-wolves, all three disappearing in the subsequent explosion.

Jarvis was next to him, his LMG chattering away.

"What are they doing?" the sergeant breathed. Every single one of the aliens was not just walking forward out of the gate, they were stepping to the sides…almost like they were making way for something. Something big.

"Crap…" Taylor responded, scrambling to break open the grenade launcher, pull the expended cartridge out and slot a new one in. He had a bad feeling he would be needing it very soon.

The blunt, solid nose slid smoothly through the gate, a rounded mass of dull, dark grey metal streaked with crimson. It glided through effortlessly, a lumpy, solid looking vehicle that hovered just above the ground. It was larger than a Puddle Jumper, but in his eyes definitely not built for flight, and as it exited the gate, various parts of its body extended and locked into new positions.

"Those are turrets." Jarvis said, dropping his LMG and slipping the AT-4 off his shoulder on reflex.

With a high pitched shriek, the turrets opened up, spewing unbroken lines of orange at the fragile pink apes dashing around in front of it. One marine didn't even have time to scream as the alien weapon fire, almost like a beam, sliced him in half. The black mineral ground was ripped to shreds, explosions of jet black volcanic rock rippling across the surface where the screaming arc of orange projectiles touched it, racing towards a cluster of SGC soldiers behind cover.

"Jarvis!"

Taylor needn't have bothered. The rocket streaked towards the hovering tank. An instant before it would slam into the thick grey metal, it exploded, and a shimmering scarlet field appeared briefly over the vehicle's skin. The turrets halted, turned in his direction.

"Holy crap, it's shielded!"

Other soldiers were following suit though. Two more AT-4 rockets hurtled towards the alien vehicle, and twice more, the explosions revealed the blood red energy field protecting it. The tank itself barely swayed, it's turrets swinging around and tracing arcs of fiery needles as it slowly advanced. The boulder they were hiding behind wouldn't provide much protection against so much incoming fire, but at least the alien vehicle was no longer firing at them.

"What the hell do we do, sir?" Jarvis shouted, pausing to fire his LMG at a newly appeared werewolf. "We can't take another thirty-eight minutes of this!"

"We won't need to – the naquadah reactor will detonate in approximately six minutes!" Llewellyn screamed back, ducking as a burst of alien gunfire streaked past him before returning the favour.

"We won't last _one_ Lieutenant!" Taylor bawled over the din of human small arms fire, pained screams, the shriek of the alien weapons and the snarling of the aliens themselves. The tank was moving closer, and the humans were almost out of anti-tank launchers. Fire raged through the heather, flames licking at the Stargate as the sky blackened. Blue white light from the gate flooded the apocalyptic battleground.

"We need to get everyone away from the gate sir, the blast might come through."

Taylor sighted and squeezed the trigger. All three rounds found their target, and the alien fell, it's wounds pouring thick, black blood.

"Llewellyn! How much C4 have you got left?" Taylor bawled as he slid further down behind the F.R.E.D. and reloaded yet again.

The aliens weren't just emerging and firing, they were moving to the sides, and Taylor groaned. Something he'd seen earlier had troubled him, and now he thought he knew what it was.

The silver and red arrowhead punched through the gate and came to an immediate stop, splitting in half and expanding instantly to reveal the oddly curved central section. As soon as Taylor had seen the first alien fighter, it had occurred to his subconscious that it was almost the right size for gate travel. As sparks erupted from its armour, it pitched upwards and shot into the sky.

"Stinger, now!" Kuznetsky yelled from the other side of the battlefield. He'd been prepared – Taylor had been sure Werner had apprised him of the situation immediately after the first air attack, and now he knew.

The missile streaked upwards, and for a moment Taylor thought the alien fighter would escape, but a moment later, an orange and red fireball put that doubt to rest. The Stargate was still active though, and there was no telling how many more of those would emerge. Did they have enough Stingers? Did they have enough time?

A sucking sound made him quickly turn his eyes back to the gate. The thing that emerged was not a heavily armed werewolf – it was a larger version of the fighters, hovering a foot above the ground. The front end was double-pronged and pointed, the top a flat surface occupied by a turret spitting a stream of orange and swinging around wildly to open fire on the fragile pink targets. It looked like a large aircraft, and as it came through, large bat-like wings spread out, and the vehicle picked up speed and lifted its nose. Taylor suddenly realised it was towing something, a train of perfectly gate-sized cylinders.

A renewed wave of gunfire slammed into the tank's hull, but instead of throwing off plumes of sparks, the hail of bullets left bursts of red light that swept over the vehicle like a ripple in a pond. Behind it, the aircraft accelerated rapidly and disappeared into the sky, dragging a train of cylinders. Another emerged and departed, then a third. The wolves seemed to be trying to put as much material as possible through the gate. The troops, even the tank, were little more than a distraction to occupy the human defenders.

As the gate rippled constantly with large aircraft towing trains of cylindrical pods, the tank opened up on one side. A ramp descended even as the red shield shimmered, and out of the vehicle six more of the werewolves had emerged, but these were different. Two of them carried different weapons – these resembled warped internal combustion engines wrapped around a hollow cylinder with a narrow silver spike poking out of the business end. The weapons must have been heavy, because they were on straps of leather and spiked chains and looked difficult for even the unnaturally strong wolves to carry.

A deafening sound filled Taylor's ears, and the smell of ozone filled his nose. One of the new weapons had discharged, a thick, painfully bright line of blue white light had streaked out of the cannon and blown a huge crater in the ground near where SG-3 had been. Black dirt showered the area. To his relief, Taylor saw the marine team had thrown themselves clear in time and were beginning to pick themselves up.

"Llewellyn! Get behind the gate, set your charges and topple it! Take out the conduit and drop the gate, now!"

Nodding, the engineer pushed himself into a run even as Jarvis and Taylor unleashed both of their weapons on full automatic. The Welsh soldier sprinted towards the dense vegetation, dodging the fires and corpses, and abruptly changed direction and headed straight for the gate, heedless of the wolves turning to train their axe-guns on him. Unless the wolves could be distracted, Llewellyn was as good as dead.

Taylor yanked the pin out of a grenade.

"Fetch!"

The wolves that had emerged from the tank quickly swivelled their heads to stare at the small olive green globe sailing through the air towards them. Seconds later, most of them were on the ground. Jarvis finished the few that weren't.

But the wolves kept coming. The tank still moved slowly forward, flashes of red periodically erupting as stray bullets slammed into its shield. There were at least two dozen wolves on the field – and the gate was still open.

* * *

Moffatt turned and looked back, her face a mask of guilt. The area around the gate was a vision of hell. A large, squat looking vehicle was chewing up the SG teams down there, and even over the din of gunfire, alien and human, she could hear men screaming in pain, crying out for help.

"This isn't right. I should be down there." she said. Before she realised it, she was running back towards the battlefield.

"Kelly – you're not leaving us." Halverson called out.

* * *

There was a loud boom and a cloud of grey brown smoke rushing away from the Stargate. A second later, the large grey ring toppled forward into the shredded black rock, dragging blackened Asgard cables out of the ground like the roots of a tree downed by a storm. The debris of the battle worked better than Taylor had hoped, forming an impromptu iris, and quickly the puddle in the horizontal gate destabilised and evaporated. Seeing this had taken the werewolves by surprise, Taylor aimed and fired at the nearest alien with renewed energy. Next to him, Jarvis was doing the same, desperately trying to wipe out the remaining aliens.

As the two heavy-weapon wielding aliens fell, the others followed, until one final wolf remained. It was different – it was bigger, almost its entire body was covered in ornate black and blood red armour, and it wielded a brutal spiked mace in one hand and a weapon that looked like a hellish cross between a meat cleaver and an AK-47 in the other. But the worst thing was that the massed gunfire simply bounced off a field of scarlet energy projecting from its armour. Even 40mm grenades exploding in its chest merely made it stagger as its personal shield rippled and flared under the strain. Between the tank and this apparently high-ranking wolf, the remaining human defenders stood little chance.

Untroubled by the hail of bullets, and seemingly by the destruction of all its fellow warriors, the armoured wolf raised the cleaver-Kalashnikov. Streams of fiery projectiles spewed from the weapon, shredding what remained of the equipment cases and ripping into the ground. Two more marines fell to the weapon as the creature advanced. The unnerving stuttering snarl it was emitting could only be laughter.

"Fall back!" Reynolds yelled. Already, several of the surviving marines were racing far away from the almost unstoppable monstrosity as it advanced alongside the seemingly invincible tank. Seeing its prey escape, the creature stopped, hunched, and leapt into the air, landing in front of a terrified marine.

"Bloody hell…" Taylor murmured as the wolf jumped – it had cleared a height of fifteen feet in his estimation, and a distance of almost thirty. And it made sense. Seeing how strong the aliens had been on a high gravity world, he should have known how powerful they'd be on a planet with gravity lower than Earth's, like P7T-434.

As the beast raised its mace, the marine cowered and tried to crawl away backwards, sliding down a short slope. The wolf never saw the missile hit its chest.

Jarvis dropped the expended AT4 launcher and collapsed against the shredded, overturned F.R.E.D., his arm, head and legs bleeding.

Taylor sprinted towards the cloud of black and grey smoke and flash of fire where the monstrous creature had been, running around behind it. As he'd anticipated, the creature was still alive, but barely. Its weapons had been thrown far away by the blast, its armour was shattered and blackened, its personal shield crackling and fizzing, and black blood covered the ground. Using the stunned wolf's armoured tail as a step, he launched himself upwards onto its back and slammed the grenade into the gap in its neck armour.

The alien reacted quicker than he'd expected, swatting him away with its now empty hand – he felt something inside him break and the talons rip into him as he flew through the air and crashed into the ground, but he didn't care.

In a flash of orange and black, the creature ceased to be.

The tank / APC remained, a seemingly invincible war machine capable of single handedly wiping out all the remaining human soldiers. Jarvis had used the last AT4 to save the marine, and Llewellyn was out of explosives. Small arms fire pattered ineffectually against the scarlet shield, accompanied by the occasional explosion of a grenade. Nothing seemed to touch the hull.

A solid line of blue-white brightness crossed Taylor's vision, and on reflex, he stopped and blinked. When his eyes cleared, the tank was on the ground, not hovering above it, and reduced to a scorched, twisted wreck smothered with flames.

He followed the retinal after-image back to its source – one of the alien heavy weapons, now in the hands of Nesbitt, Halverson, Moffatt and Lee. Taylor had never been so relieved to have his orders defied.

* * *

"Glad to see you all in one piece, Major." Landry said as Taylor limped into the briefing room. Nesbitt, Halverson, Llewellyn and Moffatt were already seated.

"Uh…several pieces inside, actually sir. But Dr Lam tells me it's not as bad as it looks, or…ah…feels." He winced, sitting down slowly. Moffatt slid his glass of water closer so he didn't have to stretch as far. The armoured wolf's swipe had cracked three of his ribs, and the subsequent collision with the ground had done nothing to improve matters. On top of this – literally – he had three large gashes from the alien's claws. The Wolverine jokes were already circulating around the SGC.

"And if you think that's bad, you should see Jarvis." Nesbitt muttered.

"I have. Dr Lam assures me that Sergeant Jarvis will be back on duty in a couple of months or so. He took a remarkable number of hits from the alien flechettes, but luckily, none of them hit anything vital. In fact, they pulled twenty-three of these out of him." Landry said, tossing a small transparent phial to Halverson. Inside, a tiny silver dart no longer than her thumbnail rattled around. She handed it to Nesbitt.

"It's trinium carbide." Landry said. "Dr Lee's analysis of the alien weapons recovered from 434 has shown they fire those at a rate of thousands a minute at hypersonic velocity. Normal body armour just can't cope. Individually they don't do much damage compared to one of our bullets, but at the rate they fire them…"

He didn't need to finish. They'd already seen what happened.

"In fact, trinium seems to feature heavily with these aliens. Their armour uses alloys of it, and even their biology incorporates it to a remarkable degree. That, I am told, is why their teeth and claws are silver, and why they are so resistant to damage. As for the other weapons, the few remains suggest they are…uh…" he stared at the file in front of him, "'endo-atmospheric charged particle weapons'. Doctor?"

"Lightning Guns." Nesbitt offered solemnly. "They must be inertially dampened, otherwise the recoil would kill the user as well."

"Sir? Shouldn't the other SG teams be at this briefing?" Taylor asked, grimacing. Landry sighed.

"SG-3 and what remains of SG-16 were debriefed yesterday, while you were still in the infirmary. SG-25 and 26, as well as the remains of the alert teams were dealt with this morning. And, as you know…none of SG-21 survived."

Taylor felt angry, sad and guilty. An entire SG team wiped out in an ultimately pointless mission.

"It's my fault. That entire team died because of me…" Halverson began.

"Actually, it isn't. Sorry I'm late, General." Daniel said from the doorway. He crossed the floor and sat down at a spare seat, sliding a file towards her.

"Dr Jackson informed me that he came to the same conclusion you did when he read the tablet – he just had access to other resources that shed light on the details." Landry said.

Halverson was speechless as she scanned the first page of the file.

"You mean…if I'd been given access to the Odyssey's core to research that tablet, they might not have died? This might not have happened? For G - " she began, quickly trailing off. Taylor was staring at her.

Landry opened the file and pulled out a photograph, sliding it down the table to Nesbitt.

"This is what the Apollo sent back to us from their reconnaissance flight through 434's system. That, as I'm sure Dr Nesbitt will agree…is a black hole. A small one."

Nesbitt looked up from the photograph in front of him, his mouth agape.

"A black hole…the other star! But there's no way a star that size could become a black hole. Not naturally, at least…oh, wow." He said.

"Hmm. This was orbiting the black hole." Landry said, producing a second photograph. The new image showed a star field, and in the centre of the image, a complex structure of curved silver fins and flattened cylinders.

"We know of only a handful of races capable of artificially collapsing masses into black holes. This structure is almost seven hundred miles wide, it's Asgard, it's using the black hole as a power source, and according to Colonel Carter and Dr Lee, it's generating the resistant subspace barrier you described. The Apollo found it too, as well as debris consistent with a scout ship. More importantly, they found identical installations, all powered by small black holes, in the systems of the other addresses on the tablet. The barrier encompasses an entire section of the galaxy almost one hundred light years in diameter."

"How's nobody encountered it before?" Moffatt said.

"Nobody knows, but we've got theories." Daniel said. "For instance, anybody who sends ships into the region that never come back eventually stops sending ships. And it's too far off the beaten track to be worth expending a lot of time and resources."

Halverson sat, chewing her lip.

"It isn't a vault. It's a prison. It's…" her demeanour changed swiftly, from contemplative to energetic. "In Norse mythology, there is a tale. The Norse Gods, the Aesir, who lived in Asgard, were afraid of a wolf called Fenrir, so they bound him in an unbreakable ribbon called Gleipnir. I think those aliens we encountered were the basis for the Fenrir myth…and probably every werewolf legend and the basic human distrust of wolves as well, thanks to the Asgard."

"Like the Ancients instilled a negative association of fire in many human societies so we would know the Ori were trouble." Daniel said.

"And the ribbon, Gleipnir, wasn't a ribbon, it was a chain…a chain of satellites, holding back a wolf-like race. These...Fenrir. What concerns me is that the tale goes on. It says that at Ragnarok, the Norse end of the world, Fenrir would break free and have revenge on his captors."

"And, unfortunately, that also tallies." Landry said. "The Apollo took some detailed readings of the installations. They're failing. The barrier is still impassable, but within a matter of years, it will fail, and these aliens, these…Fenrir, will be let loose on the galaxy."

Nesbitt coughed.

"To some extent, I'm afraid they already are. Those ships leaving the gate? The Apollo detected hyperspace activity near the planet around the time they would have made orbit. If you're right and the Fenrir have been trapped in that prison for thousands of years, waiting for revenge on the Asgard, it seems likely they sent out a small expeditionary force in those ships. They've probably been looking for a way out for ten thousand years. I don't even want to think what they'll do now they're free."

"Isn't it obvious? They're going to try and bring down the barrier, let the rest of their people escape."

"That can't be allowed to happen." Taylor said grimly. "And if the Gleipnir system is failing, any chance we had of simply burying the 434 gate and forgetting about them disappeared. What really worries me is that we showed them there's a way out, and even though we're pretty sure the mark II generator detonated, I wouldn't count on the Asgard control crystal being destroyed. They strike me as a tenacious and unstoppable race – if they know there's an escape route, they won't rest until they've found it. And with people on the outside, the odds aren't in our favour."

* * *

The phone's ringing was remarkably loud, not least because it was 3am and the bedroom's two occupants were fast asleep.

"Yes? Who is this? Of course I'm him you imbecile, get to the bloody point!"

Major General Sir Richard Bullock sat bolt upright, all trace of irritability and fatigue forgotten.

"Of course they'll say it's our fault, but that doesn't matter. This is playing right into our hands! Have they heard the proposal? Right…what does the I.O.A. say about this? And the Prime Minister? Really? Good. Alert the rest of the committee, and arrange a meeting for the morning. We can't fail now – and we'll give the bloody Yanks a run for their money, ha ha!"

He replaced the receiver and lay back down, but he knew it would be a while before sleep took him again.

In the meantime, ideas flitted through his head. They had the International Oversight Advisory's approval, and now the Prime Minister's too. Even better, playing the guilt and grim responsibility cards had been their masterstroke, and had all but forced the Pentagon to agree to the proposal. They would get as much access to the Stargate as they needed, and the budget had been approved – of course, it would mean the Royal Navy would have to reduce its planned fleet of new Astute-class submarines by two, and the two new aircraft carriers would need to be delayed while a lot of the funding was temporarily redirected. All that remained now was to actually begin construction on the new British military base, made the more difficult by its location, sixty-three thousand light years away.

After all, there were wolves at the gate.

* * *

_Well, that's the end of the first installment of Stargate: Ragnarok. I'm already working on Part 2, "Wolves At The Gate". Let me know if you want to see more, what you think of the characters, the story, the aliens...anything. Thanks for getting this far!_


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